lUl-il!  V 


J     v>i    v^r-iiuiii  vyi\.i  <  i^ 


THE  GIFT  OF 

MAY  TREAT  MORRISON 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

ALEXANDER  F  MORRISON 


y 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE 
PLAYER,  PLAYMAKER,  AND   POET 


■  '  '  y  '   1    3    , 

'    5  1  J   3   1    , 


THE 

SHAKESPEARE  PROBLEM  RESTATED 

By  G.  G.  Greenwood,  M.P. 

In  re  SHAKESPEARE. 
BEECHING  V.  GREENWOOD 

A  rejoinder  on  behalf  of  the  defendant 

By  G.  G.  Greenwood.  MP. 


•  •  •    • '  .    « 


•   « 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE 


PLAYER,  PLAYMAKER,  AND  POET 


A  REPLY  TO  MR.  GEORGE  GREENWOOD,  M.P. 


BY 

H.  C.  BEECHING,  D.Litt. 
• ) 

CANON    OF  WESTMINSTER 
PREACHER   TO   THE  HONOURABLE  SOCIETY   OF  LINCOLN'S  INN 


WITH  FACSIMILES  OF  THE  FIVE  AUTHENTIC 
SIGNATURES   OF  THE  POET 


NEW   YORK 
JOHN   LANE   COMPANY 

MCMIX 


r       •     > 


Cri 


CU 


To 
CECIL   HENRY   RUSSELL,   ESQUIRE, 

Treasurer  of  tJie  Honourable  Society  of  Lincoln's  Inn. 


tt  My  dear  Treasurer, — One  reason  for  asking 
^  your  patronage  of  this  little  book  is  that  I  may  have 
the  pleasure  of  recording  my  thanks  for  many  acts 
z  of  kindness,  both  from  yourself  and  from  other 
^  members  of  your  worshipful  bench,  since  I  was 
admitted  to  serve  the  Society  in  the  first  month  of 
the  new  century  ;  not  the  least  of  them  being  my 
recent  election  for  a  second  term  of  office  as  Preacher. 
But  a  further  reason  more  closely  concerns  the 
pamphlet  itself;  which  is  an  attempt  to  meet  the 
latest  statement  by  a  lawyer,  Mr.  George  Green- 
wood, M.P.,  of  the  Middle  Temple,  of  a  curious 
paradox  which  seems  to  have  a  special  fascination 
for  legal  minds  ;  I  mean,  the  opinion  originated  by  a 
Miss  Delia  Bacon  in  America,  and  since  imported 
into  this  country,  that  *'  Shakespeare's  "  works  were 
written  by  the  great  Lord  Chancellor,  her  name- 
sake. 

434573 


VI  SHAKESPEARE 

When,  as  Chaplain  of  the  Inn,  I  was  honoured 
with  a  seat  at  the  barristers'  mess,  this  topic  came  up 
frequently  for  discussion  ;  and  I  should  admit  that 
as  a  recreation  at  dinner,  and  as  a  trial  of  wits,  the 
theme  was  excellent,  for  it  is  always  a  good  exercise 
to  discover  and  test  the  grounds  of  a  traditional 
belief.  But  the  heresy,  if  I  may  call  it  so,  which  at 
the  outset  numbered  but  a  few  fanatical  adherents, 
has  of  late  made  many  converts  among  members  of 
your  profession  ;  and  one  or  two  distinguished  Judges, 
both  in  England  and  America,  have  written  books 
upon  it.  To  their  surprise  and  chagrin,  as  I  am  told, 
very  little  notice  was  taken  of  them  ;  the  reason,  of 
course,  being  that  most  persons  who  have  enough 
capacity  to  discuss  the  question  at  all,  judge  it  as  a 
question,  not  of  evidence,  but  of  the  literary  palate.  If 
anyone  can  believe  that  the  same  vineyard  produced 
"  King  Lear"  and  "  The  Advancement  of  Learning," 
he  must  believe  it ;  there  is  nothing  more  to  be  said. 
But  the  latest  defender  of  the  paradox  has  restricted 
himself  to  a  denial  of  the  Shakespearian  authorship, 
without  asserting  the  Baconian — that  is  to  say,  he 
has  changed  the  venue  of  the  matter  from  the  court 
of  literature  to  that  of  history.  In  five  hundred  large 
octavo  pages  he  has  set  out  "  some  of  the  evidence 
and  the  arguments"  which  in  his  judgment  "make 
in  favour  of  the  negative  proposition." 

Now  while  the  negative  proposition  seems  to  me, 
on  the  merits,  an  equally  impossible  contention  with 
the  other,  it  is  nevertheless  an  arguable  one  ;  and  as 


SHAKESPEARE  Vll 

I  found  that  certain  opinions  of  mine  were  quoted 
by  Mr.  Greenwood  with  a   measure  of  approval,   I 
determined  to  argue  it ;  not,  I  confess,  in  the  expec- 
tation  of  converting   Mr.   Greenwood,  for   he  safe- 
guards himself  by  saying  that   the  "evidence  and 
arguments  "  for  his  case  "  might  be  extended  almost 
ad  infinitum  " — and  indeed  the  Baconian  faith  peeps 
out   in    not   a   few   places  from  under  his  cloak  of 
agnosticism — but  for  the  sake  of  those  members  of 
the  Bar  who  have  an  interest  in  the  question  without 
being   committed  to   an  answer,  and  who   can    see 
when   evidence  is   not  to  the  point,  and   when   an 
argument  has  been  fairly  met.     Having,   therefore, 
an  invitation    to   give   a   lecture  before   the    Royal 
Society  of  Literature,  I  devoted  it  to  an  examination 
of  Mr.  Greenwood's  case,  so  far  as  it  is  contained  in 
his  book,  with  what  result  will  appear  in  the  follow- 
ing pages.     But  in  order  to  show  more  clearly  what 
positive  evidence  there  is    for  the  traditional   view, 
I  have  revised  and   reprinted  two  lectures  given  at 
the  Royal  Institution,  which  endeavour  to  set  out  the 
facts  of  the  Player's  life  as  simply  as  possible,  and 
to  show  the  congruity  of  what  is  recorded  of  his 
character  with  the  impression  made  upon  our  minds 
by  the  dramas  themselves. 

I  remember  that  Ben  Jonson  dedicated  one  of  his 
plays  to  the  Inns  of  Court  as  being  the  noblest 
nurseries  of  "  humanity  "  in  the  Kingdom,  and  the 
best  judge  of  humane  studies.  They  are  not  less  so 
to-day,  and  therefore  it  is  that  I  take  the  liberty  of 


viii  SHAKESPEARE 

appealing  to  them,  through  you,  for  a  judgment  on 
this  issue. 

I  have  the  honour  to  be,  my  dear  Treasurer,  your 
most  obliged  and  humble  servant, 

H.   C.    BEECHING. 
Lincoln's  Inn  :  November  1908. 


Note. 

In  the|[first  lecture,  for  the  sake  of  brevity,  I  have  had 
to  put  the  section  headings,  which  express  Mr.  Greenwood's 
contentions,  into  my  own  words.  They  can  be  verified 
from  the  remarkably  full  index  to  his  volume.  I  am 
indebted  to  my  friend  Mr.  Sidney  Lee  for  permission  to 
use  the  facsimiles  of  signatures  made  for  his  Life  of 
Shakespeare, 


LIST   OF   FACSIMILE    SIGNATURES 


SHAKESPEARE'S  AUTOGRAPH  SIGNATURE  APPENDED  TO 
THE  PURCHASE-DEED  OF  A  HOUSE  IN  BLACK- 
FRIARS  ON  MARCH  ID,  1613        ....   facing  p.     20 

Reproduced  from     the    original    document    now 
preserved  in  the  Guildtiall  Library,  London. 

SHAKESPEARE'S  AUTOGRAPH  SIGNATURE  APPENDED 
TO  A  DEED  MORTGAGING  HIS  HOUSE  IN  ELACK- 
FRIARS  ON   MARCH    II,    1613         ....  ,,  20 

Reproduced  /rom     tJte     original    document    now 
preserved  in  the  British  Museum. 

THREE  AUTOGRAPH  SIGNATURES  SEVERALLY  WRITTEN 
BY  SHAKESPEARE  ON  THE  THREE  SHEETS  OF  HIS 
WILL  ON    MARCH   25,    1616  ....  >j  75 

Reproduced  from  the  original  document  noio   at 
Somerset  House  London, 


3     «      X     a 


Mr.  GREENWOOD'S  CASE  EXAMINED 

I  HAVE  met  so  many  people,  especially  members  of 
the  Bar,  who  have  told  me  that  Mr.  Greenwood's 
re-statement  of  what  he  calls  "the  Shakespeare 
problem  "  deserves  and  awaits  an  answer,  that,  having 
the  opportunity  of  addressing  this  Society  on  a 
literary  question,  I  thought  it  might  be  profitable  to 
see  what  exactly  the  problem  is  of  which  Mr.  Green- 
wood speaks,  and  whether  it  is  to  be  solved  as  Mr. 
Greenwood  solves  it.  The  problem  is,  in  Mr.  Green- 
wood's words,  this :  "  Was  Shakspere  the  player 
identical  with  Shakespeare  the  poet?"  (p.  xxii), 
Mr.  Greenwood  is  careful  to  guard  himself  against 
being  supposed  to  ask  whether  Francis  Bacon  wrote 
the  Shakespearian  plays  and  poems,  for  that  is  a 
literary  question  on  which  men  of  letters  would  be 
entitled  to  the  last  word.  If,  for  example,  a  claim 
were  made  that  Bacon  was  the  writer  of  the  prose 
passages  in  the  plays  of  Shakespeare,  it  would  be 
no  difficult  task  to  examine  the  development  of  the 
prose  style  in  the  one  case  and  in  the  other,  and  see 
whether  they  corresponded,  for  I  do  not  think  it 
could  be  argued  that  the  same  writer  could  develop 

B 


2  SHAKESPEARE 

two  distinct  prose  styles  in  two  different  ways.     But 
Mr.  Greenwood,  as  I  said,  leaving  aside  literary  con- 
siderations, confines  himself  to  the  question  upon  which 
he  ought  to  be  as  competent  to  form  an  opinion  as  any 
man,  and  more  competent  than  many,  because  of  his 
legal  training — the  question  whether  there  is  evidence 
that  the  player  of  Stratford  and  the  poet  of  Parnassus 
were   the    same    person.       I    must    admit    that    Mr. 
Greenwood  employs  in  his  task    some   professional 
talents  which  are  more  appropriate  to  the  advocate 
than    the  judge.     Indeed,  his  book  appears    to    be 
addressed    to   those    twelve    men    in    the    box,    the 
Palladium  of  our  liberties,  whose  conspicuous  merit 
it  is  that  they  bring  to  the  decision  of  the  questions 
of  fact  submitted  to  them  a  completely  open  mind  ; 
for  we  have,  in  these   five   hundred  pages,  finished 
examples  of  most  of  the  arts,  from  browbeating  to 
persiflage,  from  innuendo  to  declamation,  which  make 
up  much  of  the  equipment  of  the  successful  prac- 
titioner at  the  Old  Bailey.     Anyone  who  has   heard 
the  cross-examination  of  medical  experts  in  a  murder 
case  will  have  an  exact  analogue  of  the  way  in  which 
Mr.  Greenwood  handles,    for  example,  Mr.    Sidney 
Lee  or  the  late  Professor  Churton  Collins.     By  any 
and    every    means    they    must    be    made   to    seem 
ridiculous.     If  they  agree,  it  is  a  conspiracy  of  fools  ; 
if  they  differ  upon   any  point,  however  unimportant 
to  the  question  at  issue  ; — "  You  see  for  yourselves, 
gentlemen  of  the  jury,  the  value  of  expert  evidence"! 
I  propose  to  leave  on  one  side  this  very  large  portion 


SHAKESPEARE  3 

of  Mr.  Greenwood's  book  which,  he  would  admit, 
cannot  be  called  evidence  ;  and  to  devote  this  paper 
to  disengaging,  so  far  as  I  can,  and  answering,  as 
briefly  as  possible,  the  actual  arguments  which  he 
puts  forward. 

There  are,  however,  two  forensic  artifices,  as  I 
must  call  them,  of  which  particular  notice  must  be 
taken,  because  they  are  likely  to  mislead.  The  first 
is  the  suggestion  of  hidden  meanings  in  quite  simple 
expressions  and  commonplace  uses ;  an  effective 
practice,  of  which  the  classical  instances  are  the 
"  chops  and  tomata  sauce  "  and  "  warming-pan  "  of 
Mr.  Serjeant  Buzfuz.  I  will  give  an  example  of 
considerable  importance  for  the  Baconian  case,  if  not 
for  Mr.  Greenwood's. 

Ben  Jonson  was  present  at  the  celebration  of 
Bacon's  sixtieth  birthday,  and  wrote  an  Ode,  which 
opens  thus : — 

"  Hail,  happy  genius  of  this  ancient  pile  ! 
How  comes  it  all  things  so  about  thee  smile, 
The  fire,  the  wine,  the  men  ;  and  in  the  midst 
Thou  standst  as  though  some  mystery  thou  didst  ?  " 

Mystery,  says  Mr.  Greenwood  !  "  What  was  the 
mystery  which  was  being  performed  ?  The  Baconians 
assert  that  here  is  an  allusion  to  the  secret  Shake- 
spearian authorship — a  secret  known  to  Jonson,  and 
which  he  hoped  might  soon  be  published  to  the 
world.  The  Stratfordians,  of  course,  reject  this 
interpretation  with  scorn,  but  they  are  unable  to  give 
any  plausible  explanation  of  Jonson's  meaning,  and 

B2 


4  SHAKESPEARE 

the  mystery  remains  a  mystery  still  "  (paj^e  490). 
Well,  why  should  "  Stratfordians  "  invent  explanations 
for  what  Jonson  himself  explains  in  the  next  line? 

•*  Pardon,  /  read  it  in  thy  face,  the  day 
For  whose  returns,  and  many,  all  these  pray  : 
And  so  do  I.     This  is  the  sixtieth  year,"  &c. 

Jonson  is  addressing  not  Bacon  but  the  Genius  of 
the  house,  whom  he  sees  celebrating  the  "  mystery  "  of 
Bacon's  sixtieth  birthday  ;  and  to  the  happy  rite  he 
joins  his  own  prayers.  That  is  all.  As  a  classical 
scholar,  Mr.  Greenwood  is  not  ignorant  that  "  to  do 
a  mystery"  (mysteria facere)  means  only  to  perform 
religious  rites,  and  conveys  no  hint  of  any  "  mystery  " 
in  the  vulgar  sense  of  the  word. 

The  other  artifice  which  Mr.  Greenwood  him- 
self allows  me  to  call  forensic  (p.  i)  is  "bluff";  and 
it  is  curious  to  discover  that  the  very  kej'stone  of  Mr. 
Greenwood's  elaborate  piece  of  architecture  is  nothing 
better — I  mean  his  assumption  that  the  difference 
between  two  spellings  of  Shakespeare's  name  is 
significant.  Throughout  his  book  he  distinguishes 
"  Shakspere  "  the  player  from  "  Shake-speare  "  the 
poet ;  as  though  this  assignment  of  the  two  spel- 
lings were  not,  as  it  is,  a  mere  fancy  of  his  own, 
but  clear  on  the  face  of  the  documents,  and  indis- 
putable. There  is,  in  fact,  not  a  tittle  of  evidence 
to  support  it.  To  begin  with,  the  presumption  is 
wholly  against  it,  because  the  spelling  of  surnames 
in  the  seventeenth  century  was  even  more  incon- 
sistent   than    that   of  ordinary  words.      Sir   Walter 


SHAKESPEARE  $ 

Ralegh,  for  example,  is  known  to  have  spelt  his 
signature  in  five  different  ways — Rauley,  Rawleyghe, 
Rauleigh,  Raleghe,  Ralegh.^  And  the  actual  evidence 
that  in  Shakespeare's  case  the  variation  in  spelling 
is  equally  meaningless  can  be  given  very  shortly,  and 
is  conclusive.  It  falls  into  two  parts — evidence  of  the 
inconsistent  use  of  both  spellings,  and  evidence  of 
the  use  of  the  spelling  Shakespeare  in  reference  to 
the  Stratford  player. 

1.  The  inconsistency.  There  are  two  drafts  of  the 
grant  of  coat-armour  (1596,  1599);  the  spelling  in 
the  former  is  Shakespeare,  in  the  latter  Shakespere. 
In  the  proceedings  of  the  Stratford  Courts  of  Record 
the  spelling  is  interchangeably  Shackspeare  and 
Shackspere,  and  in  the  litigation  about  the  Asbies 
estate,  Shackespere  and  Shakespeare.  Of  printed 
books  bearing  the  author's  name,  while  the  first  two 
publications — the  poems  (1593-4) — use  the  form 
Shakespeare,  the  third,  a  quarto  of  "  Love's  Labour's 
Lost"  (1598),  uses  Shakespere',  and  two  reprinted 
quartos  of  the  same  year  the  form  Shakespeare, 

2.  The  use  of  the  form  "  Shakespeare  "  in  reference  to 
the  Stratjord  player.  This  spelling  is  found  in  the 
list  of  actors  attached  to  Ben  Jonson's  *'  Every  Man 
in  his  Humour"  in  the  folio  of  1616  [in  "  Sejanus  " 
it  is  Shake-speare] ;  and  also  in  that  prefixed  to 
Shakespeare's  own  Folio.  The  same  spelling  is  used 
in  the  reference  to  the  player  in  the  accounts  of  the 
Treasurer  of  the   chamber  in    1594   (see  page    59). 

'  Stebbing's  Life,  p.  31. 


6  SHAKESPEARE 

It  is  used  in  the  documents  connected  with  the 
purchase  both  of  the  Blackfriars  estate,  and  New 
Place.  ^ 

3.  Mr.  Greenwood  lays  great  stress  on  the  hyphen 
which  appears  occasional!)-  between  the  two  syllables 
of  the  name  Shakespeare  as  strong  corroborative 
evidence  that  that  form  of  the  spelling  was  appro- 
priated by  some  poet  unknown  as  a  "■  nom  de plume!' 
I  have  pointed  out  above  that  the  full  spelling,  with 
the  hyphen,  is  used  of  the  actor  in  "  Sejanus."  But 
that  no  importance  can  be  attached  to  the  hyphen  is 
decisively  shown  by  a  comparison  between  the  title- 
pages  of  the  two  quartos  of  "  Hamlet."  The  hyphen 
is  found  on  the  title-page  of  the  pirated  "  Hamlet " 
of  1603,  and  disappears  from  the  title-page  of  the 
authentic  quarto  of  the  year  following.  Moreover,  it 
is  used  in  one  of  the  commendatory  poems  prefixed 
to  the  First  Folio,  but  not  by  Ben  Jonson,  who  (on 
Mr.  Greenwood's  hypothesis)  would  have  understood 
its  significance. 

The  evidence,  therefore,  of  any  definite  inten- 
tion behind  the  inconsistent  spellings  of  the  name 
Shakspere  or  Shakespeare^  or  Shakespeare,  is  altogether 
absent ;  and  the  elaborate  pains  that  Mr.  Greenwood 
takes  all  through  his  book  to  distinguish  "  Shakspere  " 

'  A  word  may  Ijc  added  as  to  the  player's  own  use.  In  the  extant 
signatures  he  does  not  use  an  e  in  the  first  syllable ;  in  the  two  of  161 3 
the  last  .syllable  is  contracted  by  the  exigencies  of  space  ;  but  on  the 
will  the  final  signature  is  unmistakably  "  speare,"  and  I  have  Dr.  E.  J.  L. 
Scott's  authority  for  saying  that  the  second  also  has  the  a  ;  the  first  is 
too  much  faded  for  certainty.     See  facsimiles,  pp.  20,  75. 


SHAKESPEARE  7 

the  player  from  "  Shakespeare  "  the  poet,  is,  to  use 
his  own  term,  nothing  but  "  a  form  of  bluff."  I  have 
dwelt  on  this  point  at  length  because,  as  will  be  seen, 
Mr.  Greenwood  calls  this  suggestion  of  a  pseudonym 
to  his  aid  as  a  deus  ex'>nachina  when  sober  reasoning 
fails. 

To  come  now  to  the  arguments  employed  to  show 
that  the  Stratford  player  could  not  have  written 
the  Shakespearian  plays  and  poems.  I  will  take 
them  one  by  one,  and  treat  them  as  briefly  as  pos- 
sible. 

I.  The  town  of  Stratford  was  insanitary.  It  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  this  objection  is  meant  to  be 
taken  seriously.  "  We  are  accustomed,"  says  Mr. 
Greenwood,  "  to  think  of  Stratford  as  a  delightful 
haunt  of  rural  peace,  '  meet  nurse  for  a  poetic  child ' ; 
and  fancy  pictures  have  been  drawn  of  a  dreamy 
romantic  boy  wandering  by  the  pellucid  stream  of 
the  Avon,  and  communing  with  nature  in  a  populous 
solitude  of  bees  and  birds.  Far  different  was  the 
real  historical  Stratford.  A  dirty  squalid  place,"  &c. 
(p.  4).  It  would  be  a  fair  reply  to  this,  that  if  there 
were  no  drains  in  Stratford,  the  Avon  was  the  more 
likely  to  be  "  pellucid  "  ;  and  as  Stratford  was  a  small 
town,  and  William  Shakespeare  had  legs,  he  may 
have  been  able  occasionally  to  escape  from  the  smell 
of  muck-heaps,  supposing  them  to  be  prejudicial  to 
the  development  of  literary  power.  But  Mr.  Green- 
wood assumes  that  point  :  and  until  he  proves  it,  no 
more  need  be  said  about  Stratford. 


8  SHAKESPEARE 

2.  William  Shakespeare's  father  could  not  write  his 
name.  Here  there  is  a  conflict  of  evidence.  Mr.  Lee 
prints  in  the  illustrated  edition  of  his  "  Life  "  a  fac- 
simile of  John  Shakespeare's  autograph.  But,  as- 
suming Mr.  Greenwood  to  be  right,  I  would  point 
out  that  there  is  no  evidence  that  Marlowe's  father 
could  write  his  name  ;  and  yet  Mr.  Greenwood  does 
not  follow  Mrs.  Gallup  in  disputing  the  authenticity 
of  his  plays.  No  argument  can  run  from  John 
Shakespeare's  illiteracy  to  his  son's.  He  was  a  self- 
made  man,  who  served  in  turn  every  office  in  his 
municipality  ;  and  no  men  are  so  conscious  of  their 
defects  in  education,  or  so  anxious  to  secure  for 
their  children  the  advantages  they  have  not  them- 
selves enjoyed. 

3.  There  is  no  evidence  that  William  Shakespeare 
ever  went  to  the  Stratford  Grammar  School.  True, 
there  is  no  recorded  list  of  scholars.  But  as  the 
school  was  free  to  all  burgesses,  why  of  all  the  boys 
in  the  town  should  the  eldest  son  of  the  chief 
alderman  have  been  withheld  from  the  privilege  of 
attending  it  .•*  It  must  be  accepted  that  he  went  to 
school,  unless  a  presumption  can  be  shown  against 
it.  There  is  such  a  presumption,  replies  Mr.  Green- 
wood. "  He  never  in  all  his  (supposed)  writings  makes 
mention  of  the  Stratford  school  or  of  its  master  " 
(p.  47).'      I  remember  no   reference  to  their  schools 

'  I  have  looked  in  vain  for  any  reference  of  the  sort  in  Mr.  Green- 
wood's pages.  To  defend  my  own  identity,  may  I  say  how  much  I 
owe  of  my  love  of  Shakespeare  to  Dr.  Abbott's  lessons  at  the  City  of 
London  School. 


SHAKESPEARE  9 

or  schoolmasters  in  the  works  of  any  contemporar}- 
dramatists  except  Jonson  and  Drayton.  Of  Drayton 
I  shall  have  a  word  to  say  presently.  Jonson  wrote 
an  ode  to  Camden,  his  master  at  Westminster  ;  and 
the  sufficient  explanation  of  such  an  unusual  cele- 
bration is  that  he  was  Camden.  Spenser,  Kyd,  and 
Lodge  were  at  Merchant  Taylors'  School,  but  they 
are  silent,  even  about  Mulcaster.  Even  Herrick, 
who  with  his  innumerable  odes  to  everybody  might 
have  been  expected  to  remember  his  pedagogue,  has 
not  done  so,  with  the  result  that  all  the  ancient 
schools  in  London  can  claim  him  as  a  pupil.  It 
cannot  be  allowed,  then,  that  there  is  any  such  pre- 
sumption against  Shakespeare's  schooling  as  Mr. 
Greenwood  contends  for. 

4.  Supposing  Shakespeare  went  to  the  Stratford 
schooly  why  should  we  assume  that  the  school  taught 
the  ordinary  grammar  -  school  curriculum  ?  The 
answer  is,  that  it  must  be  presumed  unless  evidence 
can  be  shown  against  it.  And  all  the  evidence  is  in 
its  favour.  We  know  that  Latin  was  taught  in  the 
school  a  few  years  before,  from  letters  preserved  from 
Abraham  Sturley  to  Richard  Ouiney,  both  Stratford 
burgesses.  In  these  letters,  says  Malone,  "are  inter- 
mixed long  Latin  paragraphs  "  :  and  he  prints  one 
wholly  in  Latin,  besides  another,  also  in  Latin,  to 
Quiney  from  his  son  while  in  the  school.^  Latin  there- 
fore was  taught  at  Stratford.  That  being  so,  the 
Latin  books  read  could  hardly  have  been  other  than 

'  Malone,  ii.  105-6, 


lO  SHAKESPEARE 

the  usual  text  books,  of  which  the  Shakespearian  plays 
give  evidence  (p.  42).  We  find  a  hstof  themin  a  descrip- 
tion of  his  education  given  by  another  Wa  rwickshire 
"butcher's  son"  (as  Aubrey  calls  him)  who  became 
a  poet,  Michael  Drayton.  In  a  delightful  passage  of 
Drayton's  letter  "  to  my  most  dearly-loved  friend 
Henry  Reynolds,  esquire,"  he  writes  as  follows  : — 

"  For  from  my  cradle  you  must  know  that  I 
Was  still  inclined  to  noble  poesy  ; 
And  when  that  once  Pueriles  I  had  read, 
And  newly  had  my  Cato  construed, 
In  my  small  self  I  greatly  wondered  then, 
Amongst  all  other,  what  strange  kind  of  men 
These  poets  were,  and  pleased  with  the  name 
l^o  my  mild  Tutor  merrily  I  came, 
(For  I  was  then  a  proper  goodly  page 
Much  like  a  pigmy,  scarce  ten  years  of  age) 
Clasping  my  slender  arms  about  his  thigh, — 
'  O  my  dear  master,  cannot  you,'  quoth  I, 
'  Make  me  a  poet  ?     Do  it,  if  you  can, 
And  you  shall  see,  I'll  quickly  be  a  man.' 
Who  me  thus  answer'd  smiling  :  '  Nay,'  quoth  he, 
'  If  you'll  not  play  the  wag,  but  I  may  see 
You  ply  your  learning,  I  will  shortly  read 
Some  poets  to  you.'     Phoebus  be  my  speed, 
To  't  hard  went  I  ;  when  shortly  he  began, 
And  first  read  to  me  honest  Mantuan 
Then  Virgil  s  Egloe^ues.     Being  entered  thus 
Methought  I  straight  had  mounted  Pegasus, 
And  in  his  full  career  could  make  him  stop, 
And  bound  upon  Parnassus'  bi-clift  top." 

If  Drayton  worked  hard  at  his  Latin  poetry, 
and  his  unknown  master  encouraged  and  helped 
him,  why  is  it  straining  probability  to  suppose  that 
it  was  so  with  Shakespeare  ? 


SHAKESPEARE  II 

5.  But   Shakespeare  did  not    stay  long  enough  at 
school  to  acquire  as  much  Latin  as  the  writer  of  the 
plays  shows  evidence  of  possessing.     It  is  Rowe,  in  his 
"  Life,"   who    preserves    the   tradition,    which  came 
through  Betterton  from  Stratford,  that  "  the  narrow- 
ness of  his  father's  circumstances,  and  the  want  of 
his  assistance  at  home,  forced  him  to  withdraw  his 
son  from  school."     The  father's  fortunes  had  begun 
to   fail    when  William  was   thirteen  ;    but  as  there 
were  no  school  fees  to  pay,  we  need  not  assume  that 
he  was  withdrawn  as  early  as  this.     Still,  even  if  he 
were,  a  clever  boy — as  tradition  affirms  that  Shake- 
speare was,^  who  had  spent  four  years  in  learning 
Latin,  and  nothing  but  Latin,  and  who  had  been  taken 
through  the  poets  usually  read  in  grammar  schools, 
Mantuanus,   Ovid,    Plautus,   and    parts  of  Virgil — 
would  have  acquired  a  good  stock  of  Latin  reading, 
which,  if  he   had   inclination,    he    could    afterwards 
improve.    And  tradition,  coming  through  Aubrey  from 

'  Mr.  Greenwood  is  very  sarcastic  with  the  "  Stratfordians,"  as  he 
calls  the  greater  part  of  the  civilised  world,  for  accepting  or  rejecting 
the  traditions  about  Shakespeare  "at  their  own  sweet  fancy."  I 
suppose  everybody  weighs  each  tradition  separately  according  to  its 
source,  if  this  is  known  ;  if  not,  according  to  its  congruity  with  ascer- 
tained facts.  In  regard  to  the  traditions  recorded  by  Aubrey,  for 
example,  peculiar  importance  attaches  to  those  which  would  have  come 
to  him  from  Beeston  the  actor.  There  is  one  of  Aubrey's  traditions 
(which  I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  quoted  in  Mr.  Greenwood's 
pages)  to  the  effect  that  William  Shakespeare  was  a  remarkably  clever 
boy.  "  There  was  at  that  time  another  butcher's  son  in  this  town,  that 
was  held  not  at  all  inferior  to  him  for  a  natural  wit,  his  acquaintance 
and  coetanean,  but  died  young."  The  traditions  are  best  studied  in 
Halliwell-Phillipps's  Life  of  Shakespeare,  ii.  69-76,  where  they  are 
collected. 


12  SHAKESPEARE 

Beeston  the  actor,  says  of  Shakespeare,  that  "  though, 
as  Ben  Jonson  says  of  him,  he  had  but  '  small 
Latin  and  less  Greek,'  '  he  understood  Latin  pretty 
well." 

What,  then,  is  the  knowledge  of  Latin  required  by 
the  Shakespearian  plays  and  poems?     Ovid's  "  Fasti  " 
was  used    for    the    "  Rape  of    Lucrece " ;     Plautus's 
"  MenjEchmi  "  and  "  Amphitruo  "  for  "  The  Comedy 
of  Errors"  ;  and  Ovid's  "  Metamorphoses,"  along  with 
Golding's  translation,  for  "The  Tempest."     (In  the 
case  of  Plautus  there  was  a  translation  available  in 
manuscript  and  probably  an  old  play  to  work  upon. 
Lee^  p.  54.)      Besides  these  general  debts  there  are 
one  or  two  other  passages,  such  as  Portia's  speech 
on  Mercy,  which  come  immediately,  or  through  some 
other  author,  from  the  classics.     Professor  Churton 
Collins,    I    know,    went    further   than   this,  and  en- 
deavoured to  show  that   Shakespeare  had  read  the 
"  Ajax "   of  Sophocles  and  other  Greek    plays   and 
poems.     But  Mr.  Collins  was  a  man  of  vast  memory, 
and  parallel  passages  were  his  foible.     At  the  same 
time,  he  pointed  out  that  there  was  no  Greek  classic, 
of  which  he  seemed  to  trace  a  recollection  in  Shake- 

'  In  weighing  Jonson's  dictum,  we  must  remember  Jonson's  standard 
of  scholarship.  In  illustration  of  this,  I  may  quote  a  passage  from 
Selden's  TilUs  of  Honour  :  "  I  went  for  this  purpose  [to  consult  the 
scholiasts  on  Euripides'  Orestes'\  to  see  it  in  the  well-furnished  library 
of  my  beloved  friend,  that  singular  poet  Master  Ben  Jonsoii,  whose 
special  worth  in  literature,  accurate  judgment  and  performance,  known 
only  to  that  few  which  are  truly  able  to  know  him,  hath  had  from  me, 
ever  since  I  begun  to  learn,  an  increasing  admiration."  {S)monds' 
Lije  oJJoHion,  p. '164.) 


SHAKESPEARE  I3 

speare's  writings,  which  was  not  accessible  in  a  Latin 
version  :  so  that  if  some  of  the  parallels  he  adduced 
should  be  considered  too  close  for  coincidence,  there 
is  no  reason  to  regard  them  as  beyond  the  scope  of 
William  Shakespeare  of  Stratford,  educated  as  we 
know  him  to  have  been  educated. 

6.  But,  allowing  that  an  industrious  boy  could  get 
a  knowledge  of  Latin  at  Stratford,  he  would  learn 
nothing  else.  "  All  unprejudiced  men,"  says  Mr. 
Greenwood,  "  must  recognise  that  the  idea  of 
Shakspere  coming  a  raw  provincial  from  Stratford 
to  London,  adopting  the  player's  profession  after 
many  shifts  and  vicissitudes,  and  thereupon  writing 
such  a  drama  as  '  Love's  Labour's  Lost,'  and  such 
a  poem  as  '  Venus  and  Adonis,'  is,  to  say  the  least 
of  it,  wildly  improbable"  (p.  109).  When  speaking 
of  "  Love's  Labour's  Lost "  we  must  not  forget  that 
we  have  not  before  us  the  first  draft  of  that  play. 
Shakespeare  came  to  London,  probably,  in  1585, 
"Venus  and  Adonis"  was  published  in  1593,  and 
the  quarto  of  "  Love's  Labour's  Lost,"  corrected  and 
augmented,  appeared  in  1598.  We  have,  by  a  happy 
accident,  a  good  measure  of  the  extent  of  these 
"  corrections,"  for  the  first  draft  of  the  final  speech 
of  Rosalind  to  Biron,  in  v.  2,  851,  has  by  the  printer's 
carelessness  been  left  in  the  play  earlier  in  the  scene 
(lines  827-832) ;  and  a  comparison  between  the  two 
versions  enables  us  to  guess  how  very  much  of  what 
we  think  the  peculiar  beauty  of  the  play  was  due 
to  its  revision. 


14  SHAKESPEARE 

This  is  the  earlier  version  : — 

Biron.  And  what  to  me,  my  love  ?  and  what  to  me  ? 

Ros.       You  must  be  purged  too,  your  sins  are  rack'd, 
You  are  attaint  with  faults  and  perjury  : 
Therefore  if  you  my  favour  mean  to  get, 
A  twelvemonth  shall  you  spend,  and  never  rest, 
But  seek  llie  weary  beds  of  people  sick. 

"  Corrected  and  augmented  "  this  becomes  : — 

Biron.  Studies  my  lady  ?     Mistress,  look  on  me; 

Behold  the  window  of  mine  heart,  mine  eye, 
What  humble  suit  attends  thy  answer  there : 
Impose  some  service  on  me  for  thy  love. 

Ros.       Oft  have  I  heard  of  you,  my  lord  Biron, 

Before  I  saw  you;  and  the  world's  large  tongue 

Proclaims  you  for  a  man  replete  with  mocks, 

Full  of  comparisons  and  wounding  flouts, 

Which  you  on  all  estates  will  execute 

That  lie  within  the  mercy  of  your  wit. 

To  weed  this  wormwood  from  your  fruitful  brain 

And  therewithal  to  win  me,  if  you  please, 

Without  the  which  I  am  not  to  be  won, 

You  shall  this  twelvemonth  term  from  day  to  day 

Visit  the  speechless  sick  and  still  converse 

With  groaning  wretches  ;  and  your  task  shall  be 

With  all  the  fierce  endeavour  of  your  wit 

To  enforce  the  pained  impotent  to  smile. 

More  interesting  still  is  it  to  observe  that  the  best 
part  of  Biron's  speech  in  iv.  3,  290  is  an  insertion, 
lines  302-5  occurring  again  fifty  lines  lower  down. 

Let  us,  then,  state  the  problem,  in  regard  to  these 
earlier  plays,  a  little  less  rhetorically  than  Mr.  Green- 
wood does,  and  with  a  closer  eye  to  dates.  Shake- 
speare is  last  heard  of  at  Stratford  in  1585,  and 
reappears  in  company  with  Burbage  and  Kemp,  nine 
years  later,  as  playing  before  the    Queen.     Actors 


SHAKESPEARE  1 5 

tradition,  coming  through  Beeston  from  Augustine 
Phillips,  who  was  in  Shakespeare's  own  company, 
tells  us  that  Shakespeare  acted  "  exceedingly  well." 
Now  it  is  the  distinguishing  character  of  a  good 
actor  that  he  has  a  keen  eye  for  manners.  Nothing 
of  this  sort,  that  he  sees,  escapes  him  ;  and  what  he 
sees  he  can  imitate.  If  Shakespeare,  then,  had  this 
actor's  quality,  is  it  "  wildly  improbable,  to  say  the 
least  of  it,"  that  in  six  or  seven  years  he  had  im- 
proved what  chances  he  had  of  observing  manners 
in  London  so  as  to  be  able  to  represent  them  on  the 
stage  .''  I  submit,  then,  that  the  urbanity  of  Shake- 
speare's first  comedies  does  not  need  a  miracle  to 
account  for  it.  For  the  wit  I  cannot  suppose  we  are 
asked  to  account.  That  is  native,  and,  I  suggest, 
is  not  so  urbane  as  if  Shakespeare  had  been  "  a 
gentleman  born." 

To  pass,  then,  to  "  Venus  and  Adonis,"  that  other 
"  miracle,"  as  Mr.  Greenwood  would  have  us  regard 
it.  "  What  are  the  probabilities,"  asks  Mr.  Greenwood, 
"  of  a  butcher's  or  draper's  assistant  at  Stratford-on- 
Avon  at  the  present  time,  born  in  illiterate  surround- 
ings, and  brought  up  as  Shakespeare  was  brought  up, 
writing  (say),  at  the  age  of  twenty-one,  a  polished, 
cultured,  elaborate,  and  scholarly  poem,  such  as 
'  Venus  and  Adonis,'  and  of  the  same  high  degree 
of  excellence  ?  Should  we  not  look  upon  it  as  an 
almost  miraculous  performance  ?  In  Shakespeare's 
time,  and  for  a  youth  of  Shakespeare's  environment, 
it  would  have  been  a  miracle  of  ten-fold  marvel " 


l6  SHAKESPEARE 

(p.  64).  Ah,  no  ;  there  speaks  the  clever  advocate 
addressing  the  common  sense  of  the  gentlemen  in 
the  box.  The  miracle  is  to  be  explained  mainly  by 
the  fact  that  it  was  not  in  the  twentieth,  but  at  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  when  the  Spirit  of 
Literature  was  abroad  in  England,  and  when  the 
education  of  the  grammar  schools  was  still  in  the 
Latin  classics.  Would  Bottom  and  his  troupe  to-day 
play  "  Pyramus  and  Thisbe  "  ?  And  there  are  two  other 
things  to  be  borne  in  mind.  First,  the  poet  had  a 
model ;  the  "  Venus  and  Adonis  "  is  closely  modelled 
upon  Lodge's  "  Glaucus  and  Scilla."  Secondly,  the 
poet  was  no  longer  in  his  first  youth.  He  was  twenty- 
nine  when  he  printed  his  poem  (1593),  and  twenty- 
six  when  Lodge's  poem  appeared.  By  1593  he  had 
already  been  eight  years  in  London,  in  touch  for  the 
last  part  of  the  time  with  such  culture,  at  any  rate, 
as  was  possessed  by  the  young  courtiers  and  lawyers 
who  haunted  the  public  stage ;  and  it  is  noticeable 
that  the  men  of  his  early  plays  are  much  better  drawn 
than  his  great  ladies.  To  conclude  this  question  of 
Shakespeare's  learning,  is  it  not  significant  that  it 
struck  no  contemporary  writer  as  "  miraculous  "  that 
his  poems  and  plays  should  be  the  work  of  a  Strat- 
ford player  ? 

7.  There  is  no  contemporary  evidence  identifying  the 
player  with  the  author  of  the  plays  and  poems.  Let  me 
test  this  negative  in  a  few  particular  instances : 

(1)  Richard  Field,  who  published  the  "  Venus  and 
Adonis"  was  a  native  of  Stratford.     Mr.  Greenwood 


SHAKESPEARE  1 7 

acknowledges  this,  and  yet  he  says  "  there  is 
absolutely  nothing  to  show  that  Field  had  any 
acquaintance  with,  or  any  knowledge  of,  Shakspere  " 
(of  Stratford).  Now  Richard  Field,  who  was  of 
Shakespeare's  own  age,  did  not  leave  Stratford  till  he 
was  fifteen  ;  and  their  fathers  were  acquainted,  for 
John  Shakespeare,  when  Henry  Field  died,  attested 
the  inventory  of  his  goods  and  chattels.  To  most 
people  this  will  be  strong  corroborative  evidence  that 
the  poet  of  "Venus  and  Adonis"  and  the  Stratford 
youth  were  the  same  person. 

(2)  The  poet,  player^  and playmaker  are  identified  in 
the  "'  Return  from  Parnassus^  In  this  play,  acted  at 
Cambridge  in  1601,  one  of  the  dramatis  personce, 
Ingenioso,  gives  a  catalogue  of  poets  to  his  friend 
Judicio,  amongst  them  William  Shakespeare  and 
Benjamin  Johnson.  Judicio  characterises  them  one 
by  one  ;  on  William  Shakespeare  he  says :  "  Who 
loves  not  Adon's  love  or  Lucrece  rape  "  (i.  2).  Later 
in  the  play  the  actors  Burbage  and  Kemp  are  intro- 
duced discussing  the  difference  between  the  University 
playwrights  and  those  attached  to  the  playing  com- 
panies ;  and  Kemp  says,  "  Few  of  the  university  pen 
plays  well  ;  they  smell  too  much  of  that  writer  Ovid 
and  that  writer  Metamorphosis,  and  talk  too  much 
of  Proserpina  and  Jupiter.  Why,  here's  our  fellow 
Shakespeare  puts  them  all  down,  ay,  and  Ben  Jonson 
too"  (iv.  3).  I  ask,  then,  if  an  author  in  the  same 
play  speaks  of  a  poet  and  a  player-playwright  both 
as  Shakespeare,  and  (which  Mr.  Greenwood  thinks 

C 


1 8  SHAKESPEARE 

important)  spells  the  name  the  same  way  in  each 
case,  is  this  not  evidence  that  they  were  the  same 
person?  If  not,  Mr.  Greenwood  must  say  that  the 
poet  "  Benjamin  Johnson,"  who  is  mentioned  along 
with  the  poet  "  William  Shakespeare "  in  the  first 
act,  is  a  different  person  from  the  playwright  "  Ben 
Jonson  "  who  is  mentioned  along  with  the  player  and 
play-writer  "Shakespeare"  in  the  fifth  act.  And, 
indeed,  he  ought  to  say  so,  for  the  names  are 
differently  spelt !  But  what,  as  matter  of  fact,  does 
Mr.  Greenwood  say  to  the  evidence  of  the  "  Return 
from  Parnassus  "  ?  He  has  nothing  to  say,  and  so  he 
introduces  his  deus  ex  machina.  These  are  his  words  : 
it  has  "  little  or  no  evidentiary  value  as  regards  the 
question  at  issue,"  for  it  is  "  quite  consistent  with  the 
theory  that  Shake-speare  was  in  reality  a  pseudonym  " 
(p.  330).  But  we  have  already  seen  that  the  only 
evidence  offered  in  support  of  that  extraordinary 
"  theory  "  breaks  down  as  soon  as  it  is  examined. 

(3)  The  player  and  playzvright  are  identified  in  an 
epigram  of  John  Davies  of  Hereford.  Mr.  Greenwood 
goes  through  the  contemporary  allusions  to  Shake- 
speare, like  Diogenes  with  his  lantern,  looking  for  an 
honest  identification  of  the  player  with  the  poet  and 
playwright ;  and  he  comes  upon  an  epigram,'  inscribed 
"  To  our  English  Terence  Mr.  Will.  Shake-speare." 
The  hyphen  looks  attractive,  and  Terence  was 
certainly  a  play-maker,  not  an  actor,  so  Mr. 
Greenwood   proceeds  to   read  the  epigram  ;  but  he 

'  For  another  epigram  by  the  same  writer  see  p.  76. 


SHAKESPEARE  1 9 

finds  that  it  speaks  of  Shake-speare  as  "playing 
kingly  parts."  Here,  then,  is  the  identification  of 
playwright  with  player  of  which  he  was  in  search. 
No  ;  a  philosopher  is  not  so  easily  satisfied.  I  tran- 
scribe Mr.  Greenwood's  words,  adding  a  few  italics  for 
emphasis :  "  John  Davies  seems  to  have  the  player 
in  his  mind  rather  than  the  poet.  Did  he  perchance 
mentally  separate  the  two  ? "  As  philosophy  this 
is  excellent,  for  we  cannot  identify  what  we  do  not 
"  mentally  separate,"  but  I  should  like  to  have  the 
opinion  of  Mr.  Greenwood's  benchers  upon  its  merit 
as  an  appreciation  of  evidence  in  regard  to  the  point 
in  question. 

(4)  The  Earl  of  Southampton.  Mr.  Greenwood 
denies  that  there  is  a  "  scrap  of  evidence "  that  the 
Stratford  player  was  patronised  by  the  Earl  of 
Southampton  to  whom  the  poet  of  the  same  name 
dedicated  his  verses.  One  could  not  be  surprised  if 
Mr.  Greenwood  were  right,  for  the  only  evidence  in 
the  case  of  the  poet  is  the  dedicatory  letter  prefixed 
to  his  verses,  and  an  actor  cannot  dedicate  his 
gestures.  However,  there  is  a  tradition  recorded 
by  Rowe  that  "  my  Lord  Southampton  at  one  time 
gave  him  a  thousand  pounds  to  enable  him  to  go 
through  with  a  purchase  which  he  heard  he  had  a 
mind  to."  Now  this  tradition  came  to  Rowe  on  the 
authority  of  Sir  William  Davenant,  who  was  the 
godson  of  the  Stratford  player,  so  that  it  is  "  a  scrap 
of  evidence"  as  to  the  relation  of  the  player  with 

Southampton.     Both  Halliwell-Phillipps  and  Mr.  Lee 

c  2 


20  SHAKESPEARE 

think  the  tradition  probable,  even  if  the  sum  be 
exaggerated.  The  story  has  no  parallel  that  I  know 
of,  and  is  not  a  likely  one  to  have  been  invented. 

8.  "  //  is  hardly  possible  to  conceive  that  the  poems  and 
plays  were  written  in  William  Shakespeare  s  illegible 
illiterate  scraivl"  (p.  14).  The  answer  is  that  all  we 
have,  so  far  as  we  know,'  of  Shakespeare's  hand- 
writing consists  of  five  signatures,  three  of  them 
written  on  his  will  a  month  before  his  death.  These 
are  beyond  criticism  by  any  humane  person.  In 
regard  to  the  other  two,  I  join  issue  with  Mr.  Green- 
wood and  deny  that  they  are  either  illegible  or 
illiterate.  The  appeal  can  only  be  to  the  eyesight 
and  judgment  of  persons  accustomed  to  read  our 
older  hands.  But  it  is  possible  to  call  attention  to 
certain  details  which  may  escape  the  casual  observer. 
(1)  The  two  signatures  are  in  two  different  scripts  ; 
no  illiterate  person  would  write  two  hands,  but  play- 
wrights did  so  habitually  to  distinguish  the  text  from 
the  stage  directions — a  fact  that  anyone  may  verify 
who  will  consult  the  manuscript  plays  in  the  British 
Museum.  (2)  The  signatures  are  those  of  a  man 
accustomed  to  much  writing,  for  they  avoid  the 
least  superfluity  in  the  formation  and  connection  of 
letters.  Perhaps  Mr.  Greenwood  was  misled  into 
calling  the  signatures   "illiterate"  by  the  fact  that 

'  I  .say  "  so  far  as  we  know,"  because  unless  an  autograph  signed 
manuscript  turns  up,  we  have  not  a  large  enough  specimen  of  Shake- 
speare's handwriting  to  judge  by.  Some  have  thought  that  the 
abstract  of  Holinshed  (Sloane  1090)  may  be  Shakespeare's. 


Plate  I. 


^ 


Shakespeare's  autograph  signature  appended  to  the  purchase- 
deed  OF  a  house  in  blackfriars  on  march  id,  1613. 

Reproduced  from  the  original  document  now  preserved  in  the  Guildhall  Library,  London. 


'•■■-'-•  ''■   [S^ 


Shakespeare's  autograph  signature  appended  to  a  deed  mortgaging 

HIS   HOUSE    IN    BLACKFRIARS   ON    MARCH    II,    1613. 
Reproduced  from  the  original  document  now  preserved  in  the  British  Museum. 


SHAKESPEARE  21 

they  are  written  in  the  Old  English  hand,  about 
which  he  is  contemptuous,  for  he  goes  on  to  contrast 
them  with  "  Ben  Jonson's  clear  and  excellent  Italian 
handwriting."  Jonson's  writing  is  certainly  "clear 
and  excellent,"  being  modelled  on  his  master 
Camden's  ;  but  the  only  manuscript  we  possess  of 
a  play  of  his— "The  Masque  of  Queens"— is 
written  not  in  the  Italian,  but  in  the  Old  English 
hand,  the  Italian  being  used  only  for  purposes  of 
emphasis  and  distinction.  Our  one  play  of  Massinger's 
is  written  and  distinguished  in  the  same  manner. 

9.  "  There  is  not  a  letter,  not  a  note,  not  a  scrap  of 
writing  from  the  pen  of  Shakspere  which  has  come 
down  to  us  except  five  signatures  "  (p.  17).  Where  are 
the  manuscripts  of  Shakespeare's  plays  ?  They  have 
gone  to  the  same  place  as  the  manuscripts  of  Marlowe, 
and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  Greene  and  Peele, 
and  Dekker  and  Drayton,  and  Chapman  and  Ford. 
There  survives,  I  believe,  of  all  that  treasure,  which 
in  our  autograph-hunting  age  would  be  worth  a 
king's  ransom,  one  masque  of  Jonson,  one  play  of 
Massinger,  one  of  Heywood.  But  where  are  Shake- 
speare's letters  among  his  private  friends?  When 
Mr.  Greenwood  has  collected  a  dozen  letters  other 
than  begging  letters  among  all  Shakespeare's  con- 
temporary dramatists  it  will  be  time  enough  to  make 
a  mystery  of  the  absence  of  a  Shakespearian  corre- 
spondence. Still  undoubtedly  there  may  have  been 
something  complexional  in  Shakespeare's  silence. 
Every   man    has  his  humour,  and   all   men  are  not 


22  SHAKESPEARE 

given  to  letter-writing.  An  evidence  of  this  idiosyn- 
crasy may  be  found  in  the  absence  of  the  commen- 
datory lines  on  other  poets  of  which  the  Elizabethan 
age  had  its  share,  though  the  fashion  set  in  later. 
Mr.  Greenwood  thinks  this  silence  of  the  dramatist 
very  suspicious.  But  he  overdoes  his  case  when  he 
treats  Ben  Jonson  as  the  standard  in  this  matter. 

lO.  Jonson  zvrote  hundreds  of  occasional  poems,  lines 
to  friends  and  patrons,  elegies,  epitaphs,  epithalanmims. 
Where  are  Shakespeare's  similar  effusions  ?     "  Why 
should  William  Shakspere  of  Stratford  have  played 
the    part   of  William    the    Silent?"    (p.    200).      It 
is  difficult  to  take   this   sort  of  criticism  seriously. 
Where  are  the  hundreds  of  epigrams  of  Lyly  and 
Marlowe,  of  Ford  and    Webster?     Where   are   the 
epithalamiums  of  Kyd  ?    the   elegies   of  Marston  ? 
And   Echo,  as  Mr.   Greenwood   is    fond   of  saying, 
"  answers  Where  ?  "    But  how  thoughtless  is  this  con- 
stant comparison  of  Shakespeare  with  Jonson !  Jonson 
was  a  strenuous   and  not  very  popular  playwright, 
but  he  was  a  master  of  occasional  verse.     He  was 
"the  Horace"  of  the  times,  as  Sir  Edward  Herbert 
called  him  ;  and,  indeed,  he  called  himself  so  in  the 
"Poetaster."     Shakespeare  was  the  most  successful 
playwriter  of  his  generation,  with  a  lyrical  gift  quite 
un-Horatian.     W'hy  then  should  he  be  expected  to 
write  odes  and  epodes,  simply  because  Jonson  did  ? 
Mr.  Greenwood  docs  not  seem  to  have  grasped  the 
elementary  fact  about  Jonson,  that  in  most  things  he 
did,  he  was  exceptional  in  his  age.     Alone  of  all  the 


SHAKESPEARE  23 

Elizabethan  dramatists  he  collected  his  plays  ;  alone 
of  them  all  a  man  of  learning,  he  consorted  with 
men  of  learning ;  poet-laureate  and  popular  with 
the  king,  he  became  popular  with  the  courtiers. 
Now  the  epithet  Jonson  applies  to  Shakespeare  is 
"  gentle,"  which  must  imply  a  temperament  in 
marked  contrast  with  the  self-assertive  temperament 
of  Jonson  himself.  Probably  Shakespeare  was  shy — 
a  malady  that  even  to-day  afflicts  an  occasional  man 
of  letters.  In  every  literary  age  there  have  been  men 
who,  without  being  parasites,  have  been  content  to 
form  a  part  of  the  furniture  of  great  houses ;  and 
there  have  been  others  who,  like  Shakespeare  and 
Cowley,  have  preferred  their  own  fireside.  But  Mr. 
Greenwood  carries  on  his  invidious  comparison  to 
the  very  grave. 

1 1 .  Jonson' s  death  "  was  greeted  with  a  chorus  of 
elegiac  and  panegyrical  verses  ^poured  forth  by  the  best 
poets  of  the  moment.  How  different  was  the  case  of 
Shakespeare  !"  (p.  201).  Yes  and  how  different  was 
the  case  of  Beaumont  in  the  same  year  ;  though, 
being  a  Beaumont,  he  found  a  grave  along  with  his 
brother  in  Westminster  Abbey.  It  was  not  Jonson 
the  dramatist  who  was  applauded,  but  Jonson  the 
dictator  of  letters  in  London  ;  the  wits  who  con- 
tributed their  elegies  to  Jonsonus  Virbius  were  tech- 
nically "  his  sons  "  ;  men  of  the  younger  generation, 
like  Falkland  and  Waller  and  Jasper  Mayne. 
Jonson  had  set  the  fashion  of  the  new  age,  and  he 
was  its  most  venerated  tradition  ;  just  as  his  great 


24  SHAKESPEARE 

namesake,  Samuel  Johnson,  had  become  at  his  death 
the  embodiment  of  the  literary  tradition  of  the  mid- 
eighteenth  century.  When  Shakespeare  died  in  1616, 
his  star  was  already  paling  before  the  new  light  of 
Fletcher  ;  and  the  silence  of  the  poets  round  the  grave 
of  the  Stratford  player  is  not  so  conspicuous,  consider- 
ing the  fashion  of  the  day,  as  their  silence  at  the  publi- 
cation of  the  great  Folio  of  the  London  dramatist.' 

1 2.  Ben  Jonson's  mysterious  relations  ivitJi  the  Folio 
of  Shakespeare's  plays.  On  this  point  Mr.  Greenwood 
is  far  from  lucid.  He  spends  much  time  in  defend- 
ing Malone's  opinion  that  Jonson  wrote  or  revised  the 
preface  *'  to  the  great  variety  of  readers  "  signed  by 
the  players  Hemmingeand  Condell,  in  which  I  should 
agree  with  him  (though  I  should  not  agree  that  he 
wrote  the  Dedication)  ;  and  I  would  add  that  one  of 
the  strongest  arguments  for  Jonson's  authorship  is 
the  passage  he  puts  into  the  players'  mouth  :  "  What 
he  thought  he  uttered  with  that  easiness,  that  we 

'  On  this  point  Mr.  Lee's  investigation  into  the  history  of  the  pre- 
liminary leaves  of  the  Folio  is  illuminaiing.  After  showing  frum  the 
signatures  the  probable  intention  of  the  printers,  he  continues  :  "  Sub- 
sequently Shakespeare's  friend  Ben  Jonson  forwarded  not  merely  the 
fine  poem  '  To  the  memory  of  my  beloved,  the  Author,'  which  was 
set  up  on  both  sides  of  the  unallotted  blank  leaf,  but  the  lines  on  the 
portrait,  which  were  allotted  to  an  inserted  fly-leaf,  appropriately 
facing  the  title.  Hugh  Holland,  a  friend  of  Jonson's,  fired  by  his 
example,  afterwards  sent  a  commendatory  sonnet,  which  was  set  up 
on  one  side  of  a  second  interpolated  leaf;  and  on  a  later  day  Leonard 
Digges  and  James  Mabbe,  two  admirers  of  Shakespeare,  who  were  in 
personal  relations  with  the  publisher  Blount,  paid  Blount  and  Shake- 
speare jointly  the  compliment  of  sending  two  further  sets  of  com- 
mendatory verse,  which  were  brought  together  on  the  front  side  of  yet 
a  third  detached  leaf."     (Introduction  to  Oxford  Facsimile.) 


SHAKESPEARE  2$ 

have  scarce  received  from  him  a  blot  in  his  papers  "  ; 
for  he  tells  us  in  his  "  Discoveries  "  that  he  had  often 
had  from  the  players  this  testimony  to  their  fellow's 
facility.  But  when  from  this  simple  premiss  Mr, 
Greenwood  goes  on  to  hint  that,  as  Jonson  was  in  this 
year  (1623)  working  for  Bacon,  his  connexion  with  the 
Folio  may  bring  with  it  that  of  his  patron,  the  answer 
is  complete  and  can  be  given  out  of  Mr.  Greenwood's 
own  mouth.  He  points  out,  as  any  critic  must,  that 
the  Folio  text  of  "Richard  II."  and  "Midsummer 
Night's  Dream  "  is  inferior  in  some  respects  to  that 
already  before  the  public  in  certain  Quartos  ;  and 
also  that  "  Titus  Andronicus,"  which  the  Folio  in- 
cludes, was  probably  not  by  Shakespeare  at  all.  The 
irresistible  conclusion  is  that  the  author  of  the  plays 
was  either  dead,  or  uninterested  in  their  publication. 
If  he  were  dead,  he  could  not  have  been  Bacon  ; 
and  if  he  were  uninterested,  why  did  he  publish  ?  ^ 

1 3.  Jonson' s  commendatory  poem.  In  dealing  with  this 
Mr.  Greenwood  gives  us  one  of  the  finest  exhibitions 
of  what  he  calls  "  bluff"  that  I  have  ever  witnessed. 
"  We  must  remember,"  he  says  "  that  Jonson's  verses 
are  of  the  highest  importance  to  the  Stratfordians. 
Had  it  not  been  for  the  poem  prefixed  to  the  Folio  of 
1623,    ...    I   verily   believe   that   the    Stratfordian 

'  Incidentally  Mr.  Greenwood  makes  the  suggestion  that  as  the 
Folio  text  of  Richard  III.  preserves  the  misprints  of  the  Quarto  of 
1622,  and  yet  contains  additional  matter,  it  must  have  been 
retouched  after  the  actor's  death  (1616)  ;  but  a  sufficient  and  more 
plausible  explanation  is  that  the  editors  of  the  Folio  took  a  1622  text 
as  the  basis  of  their  "  copy  "  for  press. 


26  SHAKESPEARE 

hypothesis  would  lonp^  ago  have  been  given  up  as  an 
exploded  myth,  or,  rather,  would  never  have  obtained 
foothold  at  all"  (p.  io6).  However  this  may  be,  the 
poem  is  there,  and  signed  by  Ben  Jonson.  What 
has  Mr.  Greenwood  to  say  about  it  ?  Does  not  Jonson 
in  this  introductory  poem  call  the  author  of  the 
plays  "  sweet  swan  of  Avon,"  thereby  implying 
his  connexion  with  Stratford  ?  "  To  all  outward 
appearance  he  does,"  assents  Mr.  Greenwood,  and 
there  leaves  it.  But  if  that  is  his  case,  must  he  not 
at  this  point  bring  evidence  that  Jonson  was  a 
notorious  liar?  In  regard  to  the  whole  poem,  he 
says  that  it  is  "  a  riddle,"  and  that  "  by  the  Strat- 
fordians  it  has  to  be  ingeniously,  if  not  ingenuously, 
explained  away."  This  is  pretty  good,  from  the 
author  of  the  comment  on  the  "  Swan  of  Avon." 
What  Mr.  Greenwood  has  in  mind  is  the  discrepancy 
between  what  Jonson  said  about  his  friend's  "  art " 
in  his  formal  eulogy,  and  what  he  said  in  a  private 
conversation  as  reported  by  Drummond  of  Hawthorn- 
den.     In  the  poem  he  had  said  : — 

"  Nature  herself  was  proud  of  his  designs 
And  joyed  to  wear  the  dressing  of  his  lines  ! 

■  •••••• 

Yet  must  I  not  give  Nature  all  :  thy  Art, 
My  gentle  Shakespeare,  must  enjoy  a  part. 
For  though  the  poets'  matter  Nature  be, 
His  Art  doth  give  the  fashion.     And  that  he 
Who  casts  to  write  a  living  line  must  sweat 
(Such  as  thine  are)  and  strike  the  second  heat 
Upon  the  Muses'  anvil  ;  turn  the  same 
(And  himself  with  it)  that  he  thinks  to  frame 


SHAKESPEARE  2/ 

Or  for  the  laurel  he  may  gain  a  scorn, 
For  a  good  poet 's  made  as  well  as  bom  ; 
And  such  wert  thou." 

Of  his  conversation  with  Drummond,  that  poet 
notes  : — 

"His  censure  of  the  English  poets  was  this.  .  .  .  That 
Shakspeer  wanted  art.  Shakspeer  in  a  play  brought  in  a 
number  of  men  saying  they  had  suffered  ship-wrack  in 
Bohemia,  where  there  is  no  sea  near  by  some  loo  miles."  ' 

Well,  at  the  risk  of  seeming  more  ingenious  than 
ingenuous,  I  must  confess  that  what  discrepancy 
there  is  between  these  judgments  seems  to  me  very 
human  and  natural :  and  I  for  one  love  the  rugged 
old  man  all  the  better  for  it.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  Jonson  had  failed  as  a  playwright  where 
Shakespeare  had  succeeded,  and  this  in  spite  of  the 
fact,  as  he  believed,  that  he  was  the  better  artist  of 
the  two.  In  private  talk  the  soreness  came  out ; 
but  on  an  occasion  which  called  for  public  eulogy  he 
suppressed  it.  Still,  if  we  look  closely  at  the  lines 
about  Art,  we  cannot  fail  to  observe  that  they  are 
built  on  the  model  of  the  precept  laudando  precipere. 
This  part  of  the  poem  is  rather  an  address  to 
would-be    poets    than    a    eulogy    of    Shakespeare. 

'  Would  it  be  unkind  to  ask  Mr.  Greenwood  why,  if  Jonson  was  in 
touch  with  the  author  of  The  Winter's  Tale,  as  it  was  going  through 
the  press,  he  did  not  get  him  to  correct  the  blunder  ?  And  if  the 
blunder  struck  Jonson  as  so  silly  that  he  could  not  help  talking  about 
it,  was  Mr.  Greenwood's  imaginary  poet — the  man  of  learning  and 
culture — likely  to  be  less  well-informed  about  the  continent  of  Europe, 
so  as  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  Greene's  novel,  on  which  the  play  is  based, 
where  the  mistake  is  first  made  ? 


28  SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare's  lines  were  "  living,"  therefore  he  must 
have  had  "art"  as  well  as  genius.  And,  of  course, 
when  Jonson  said  to  Drummond  that  "  Shakespeare 
wanted  art,"  he  meant  that  he  took  too  little  pains 
about  his  work,  not  that  he  took  none  ;  as  the 
example  he  gave  shows.  That  this  is  the  true  inter- 
pretation of  the  not  very  difficult  "  riddle  "  is  shown 
by  the  fuller  discussion  of  the  topic  which  Jonson 
included  in  his  "  Discoveries  "  : — 

"Z>(?  Shakespeare  7iostrai\i\ — Augustus  in    Hat\erium\ 
I  remember   the   players   have  often  mentioned  it  as  an 
honour  to  Shakespeare  that  in  his  writing  (whatsoever  he 
penned)  he   never   blotted  out  a   line.     My  answer   hath 
been,  Would  he  had  blotted  out  a  thousand.     Which  they 
thought  a  malevolent  speech.     I  had  not  told  posterity  this, 
but  for  their  ignorance,  who  chose  that  circumstance   to 
commend  their  friend  by,  wherein  he  most  faulted ;  and  to 
justify  mine  own  candour :  for  I  loved  t/ie  tnan,  and  do 
honour  his  tnemory,  on  this  side  idolatry  as  much  as  any. 
He  was,  indeed,  honest  and  of  an  open  and  free  nature  ; 
had    an    excellent    phantasy,    brave    notions,   and    gentle 
expressions ;  wherein  he  flowed  with  that  facility  that  some- 
times it  was  necessary  he  should  be  stopped :  '  SufTlamin- 
andus  erat,'  as  Augustus  said  of  Haterius.     His  wit  was  in 
his  own  power,  would  the  rule  of  it  had  been  so  too.    Many 
times  he  fell  into  those  things,  could  not  escape  laughter  : 
as  when  he  said  in  the  person  of  Caesar,  one  speaking  to 
him,  *  Caesar,  thou  dost  me  wrong.'     He  replied,   '  Caesar 
did  never  wrong  but  with  just  cause,'  and  such  like  ;  which 
were   ridiculous.      But   he   redeemed    his   vices   with   his 
virtues.      There  was  ever  more  in  him  to  be  praised  tlian  to 
be  pardoned." 

I  have  quoted  this  passage  from  the  "  Discoveries  " 


SHAKESPEARE  29 

at  full  length,  not  only  for  the  sake  of  showing  that 
its  judgment  of  Shakespeare  is  perfectly  reconcilable 
with  that  of  the  great  encomium  prefixed  to  the  Folio, 
making  allowance  for  the  difference  between  prose 
and  verse,  but  also  because,  taken  by  itself,  if  Jonson 
be  a  witness  of  credit,  it  serves  as  a  refutation  of  Mr. 
Greenwood's  theory  of  the  two  Shakespeares.  Indeed, 
it  makes  Mr.  Greenwood  very  unhappy,  for  he  sees 
that  the  players'  brag  at  the  beginning  implies  that 
Shakespeare  belonged  to  them  ;  that  he  was  player 
as  well  as  playwright  ;  and  his  solution  of  the 
difficulty  seems  to  be  only  tentative.  If  I  under- 
stand him — and  I  am  not  sure  that  I  do,  for  the 
argument  of  Chapter  XV.  is  not  easy  to  disentangle — ■ 
it  would  run  as  follows :  This  passage  in  the  "  Dis- 
coveries "  must  be  understood  as  referring  only  to 
the  player  ;  the  reference  to  Haterius  confirms  this, 
for  we  must  translate  sujfflaminandus  erat  "  he  had  to 
be  shut  up  "  ;  evidently  he  used  to  "  gag  "  ;  and  as 
we  know  that  the  text  of  the  First  Folio,  for  which  the 
players  make  the  same  boast  of  receiving  unblotted 
papers,  was  not  set  up  from  author's  manuscripts  at 
all,  the  players  were  liars,  and  cannot  be  credited  here. 

But  to  this  attack,  which  is  not  wanting  in  boldness, 
the  following  considerations  are  fatal  : — 

(i)  The  reference  to  Haterius  cannot  refer  to  actor's 
gag.  The  heading  "  Augustus  in  Hat  "  governs  the 
whole  paragraph,  and  the  sense  of  the  paragraph  is 
fixed  by  the  first  clause,  which  refers  not  to  speech 
but  to  writing.     Thus   Jonson   himself  comes  in  as 


30  SHAKESPEARE 

a  witness  to   the   identity  of  the  two  Shakespeares, 
not  the  players  only. 

(2)  But,  in  respect  to  the  credibility  of  the  players. 
They  do  not  say  in  the  preface  to  the  Folio  that 
they  had  received  the  author's  "  copy  "  without  blot. 
They  say,  or  Jonson  says  for  them,  as  a  general 
praise  of  their  author's  merit  :  "  Who,  as  he  was 
a  happy  imitator  of  Nature,  was  a  most  gentle 
expresser  of  it.  His  mind  and  hand  went  together : 
And  what  he  thought  he  uttered  with  that  easiness 
that  we  have  scarce  received  fro>ii  him  a  blot  in  his 
papers.  But  it  is  not  our  province,  who  only  gather 
his  works,  to  praise  him."  The  best  explanation  of 
this  passage  is  that  it  is  an  advertisement  of  the 
inspiration  of  the  plays,  not  of  the  state  of  the  text  ; 
for  the  players  could  scarcely  mean  that  they  had 
procured  copy  for  press  from  an  author  who  had 
been  dead  seven  years. 

(3)  Accepting,  therefore,  the  prima  facie  inter- 
pretation of  this  passage  as  the  only  possible  one — 
namely,  that  Jonson  does  here  identify,  as  Mr 
Greenwood  says,  "  player  Shakspcre "  with  "  author 
Shakespeare  "  (p.  479) — we  are  precluded  from  sup- 
posing that  he  was  writing  "  with  his  tongue  in  his 
cheek,"  by  the  fact  that  he  is  writing,  as  he  says,  for 
"posterity."  If  anyone  can  bring  himself  to  think 
that  Jonson,  knowing  that  his  friend  Shakespeare, 
the  player,  was  not  the  author  of  the  plays  that  went 
by  his  name,  and  hoping  (as  Mr.  Greenwood  tells 
us  he  was  hoping)  that  the  secret  of  the  true 
authorship  would  soon  come  out,  nevertheless  wrote 


SHAKESPEARE  3 1 

down  this  serious  judgment  for  '*  posterity,"  which, 
when  posterity  came  to  know  the  truth,  would 
prove  him  either  a  fool  or  a  liar — all  I  can  say  is 
he  must  keep  his  opinion,  which  I  cannot  share. 

One  word  more  about  Jonson's  "  Discoveries." 
They  contain  a  character  of  Bacon  as  well  as  ot 
Shakespeare,  a  significant  fact  to  anyone  who  believes 
in  Jonson's  honesty.  But  it  has  often  been  remarked 
that  in  speaking  of  Bacon's  learning  and  eloquence 
Jonson  uses  an  expression,  "  insolent  Greece  and 
haughty  Rome,"  which  he  uses  also  when  speaking 
of  Shakespeare's  dramas  in  the  folio  poem.  Repeti- 
tion of  a  good  phrase  is  a  weakness  which  most 
authors  yield  to  ;  but  such  repetition  is  less  remark- 
able when  the  phrase  is  not  original.  In  writing  his 
description  of  Bacon's  oratory,  Jonson  had  before 
him  Seneca's  praise  of  Cicero,  whose  eloquence  he 
celebrated  above  that  of  "  insolent  Greece."  In  trans- 
ferring this  praise  to  Bacon,  Jonson  added  "  haughty 
Rome."  It  looks,  from  the  passage  itself,  as  if  Bacon 
were  still  living  when  it  was  penned ;  and  if  so,  its 
date  may  well  be  contemporary  with  the  eulogy  of 
Shakespeare.  However,  what  strikes  one  most  in 
the  two  characters  is  that  while  Shakespeare  is 
blamed  for  his  careless  facility,  which  needed  the 
clog,  Bacon  is  praised  for  his  terseness  of  speech, 
which  made  it  impossible  to  miss  a  word  without 
loss  to  the  sense. 

14.  The  silence  of  Philip  Henslowe.  The  argu- 
ment indicated  by  this  heading  takes  Mr.  Greenwood 
twenty-five  pages  to  develop.     It  can  be  stated  and 


32  SHAKESPEARE 

answered  in  very  few  lines.  Henslowe  was  owner  of 
the  Rose  Theatre  on  the  Bankside,  and  his  Diary, 
which  is  preserved  at  Dulwich,  contains  elaborate 
accounts  of  all  sorts  ;  amongst  them  his  share  in  the 
takings  at  the  Rose  Theatre,  and  his  dealings  with 
playwrights  in  connexion  with  the  Lord  Admiral's 
company,  of  which  he  was  manager.  Now,  Shake- 
speare's company —  Lord  Strange's,  and  on  his  death  the 
Lord  Chamberlain's — acted  at  the  Rose  Theatre  only 
between  the  following  dates  :  February  19  to  June  27, 
1592;  December  29,  1592,  to  February  i,  1593; 
June  3  to  15,  1594;  and  with  their  internal  affairs 
Henslowe  had  no  concern  at  all.  Hence  the  only 
references  to  Shakespeare  that  we  could  expect  must 
come  in  the  few  months  that  his  company  was  acting 
at  the  Rose  in  1592-3  or  the  few  days  in  1594. 
And,  as  a  fact,  we  have  a  reference  to  takings  at 
sixteen  performances  of  "  harey  the  VI." — i'.e, 
"I  Henry  VL" ' — between  March  3,  1592,  and 
January  31,  1593,  though  no  author's  name  is 
mentioned  to  that  or  any  other  play  in  the  account. 
Where,  then,  is  the  problem  in  Henslowc's  silence  ? 
To  show  that  I  am  not  doing  Mr.  Greenwood  an 
injustice,  I  must  give  an  extract  from  his  argument : — 
"  Now  here  is  another  most  remarkable  pheno- 
menon. Here  is  a  manuscript  book,  dating  from 
1 59 1  to  1609,  which  embraces  the  period  of  Shake- 
speare's greatest  activity  ;  and  in  it  we  find  mention 
of  practically  all  the  dramatic  writers  of  that  day 
with  any  claims  to  distinction — men  whom  Henslowe 

'  See  p.  62. 


SHAKESPEARE  33 

had  employed  to  write  plays  for  his  theatre  ;  yet 
nowhere  is  the  name  of  Shakespeare  to  be  found 
among-  them,  or,  indeed,  at  all.  Yet  if  Shakespeare 
the  player  had  been  a  dramatist,  surely  Henslowe 
would  have  employed  him  also,  like  the  others,  for 
reward  in  that  behalf  !  It  is  strange  indeed,  on  the 
hypothesis  of  his  being  a  successful  playwright,  as 
well  as  an  actor,  that  the  old  manager  should  not  so 
niuch  as  mention  his  name  in  all  this  large  manu- 
script volume!"  (p.  353).  The  argument  here  is, 
because  the  playwright  of  the  Chamberlain's  com- 
pany was  a  man  of  genius,  it  is  "  strange  indeed " 
that  he  should  not  be  mentioned  among  the  writers 
for  the  Admiral's  company,  who  were  so  much 
inferior.  One  might  as  well  argue  that  if  a  poet 
who  lives  in  Berkshire  is  really  a  successful  poet, 
it  is  "  strange  "  that  his  name  should  not  once  appear 
in  all  the  hundreds  of  pages  of  the  London  Directory. 
There  are  one  or  two  other  points  raised  by  Mr. 
Greenwood  which  I  ought  to  examine,  but  this  paper 
is  already  too  long.  I  have  said  nothing  about  that 
slough  of  the  Poetomachia  in  which  Baconians  love 
to  wallow,  because  Shakespeare  cannot  be  shown  to 
have  taken  any  part  in  it.  When  in  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  "  Poetaster,"  for  example,  one  side  pro- 
poses to  identify  Shakespeare  with  "  Virgil  "  and 
the  other  side  with  "  Crispinus,"  ^  that  play  is  best  left 

'  Mr.  Greenwood's  attempt  at  a  parallel  between  Shakespeare's 
coat- of- arms  and  that  of  Crispinus  is  not  very  happy.  "  A  bloody 
toe  between  three  thorns  pungent  "  is  nearer  to   Marston's  "  a  fesse 

D 


34  SHAKESPEARE 

out  of  the  controversy.  The  only  serious  omission 
of  which  I  am  conscious  is  the  doubt  raised  by 
Shakespeare's  use  of  law  terms  ;  and  that  would 
require  a  treatise  by  itself,  for  it  must  involve  a 
consideration  of  the  way  in  which  law  terms  are 
used  in  all  contemporary  literature,  and  also  an 
investigation  into  how  much  of  Shakespeare's  legal 
phraseology  can  be  traced  to  the  innumerable  law 
papers  belonging  to  the  family  suits.  Perhaps 
Mr.  Lee  will  give  us  the  former  by  and  by ; 
Mrs.  Stopes  is,  I  believe,  already  engaged  upon 
the  latter.  Meanwhile  it  is  satisfactory  to  observe 
that  if  distinguished  lawyers  of  our  own  generation 
can  be  quoted  for  the  opinion  that  Shakespeare's 
knowledge  of  law  implies  a  professional  training,  other 
lawyers,  no  less  distinguished,  can  be  quoted  on  the 
other  side.  The  most  cogent  fact,  to  my  own  mind, 
that  has  so  far  been  elicited  in  the  discussion  is  this 
— that  the  Elizabethan  dramatist  who  makes  least 
use  of  law  for  metaphor  and  illustration  is  the  only 
one  who  practised  as  a  barrister,  John  Ford,  of  the 
Middle  Temple.^ 

dancetti  ermine  between  three  fleurs-de-lis  argent "  than  to  Shake- 
speare's "  Or,  on  a  bend  sable,  a  spear  of  the  first."  "  A  bloody  toe," 
as  Mr.  Fleay  says,  is  Jonson's  joke  on  Marston's  name,  quasi 
Mars'   toen.      The   only  likeness  is   in   the   mottoes,  «*not  without 

mustard  "  and  "  non  sans  droit";  but   "not   without "  was  the 

commonest  form  of  motto.  Moreover,  if  Jonson  made  jokes  about 
Cri-spinas  (in  reference  to  the  "  thorns  ")  it  is  idle  to  say  that  what  he 
meant  was  Crisp-inas  (in  reference  to  Shake  speare)  (pp.  37,461). 
The  "  Poet-ape  "  of  Jonson's  epigram  is  probably  also  Marston.  In 
Poetaster  [y.  l)  Crispinus  is  called  "  p  ictaster  and  plagiary." 

1  "Webster  and  the  Law  :  a  parallel  by  L.  J.  Sturge,"  Shakespeare 
lakrbuck,  1906. 


SHAKESPEARE  35 


II 

THE   STORY   OF   THE   LIFE 

"  Others  abide  our  question  :  thou  art  free. 
We  ask  and  ask." 

—Arnold. 

It  is  strange  to  remember,  in  these  days  of 
multiplied  biographies,  most  of  them  stretching 
to  two  volumes,  how  little  curious  our  ancestors 
were  about  the  private  lives  of  the  men  whom 
they  delighted  to  honour.  Shakespeare  died  in 
1616.  His  first  biography  was  given  to  the 
world  nearly  a  century  later  (1709),  by  Nicholas 
Rowe,  and  of  the  ten  facts  which  it  contains, 
eight,  according  to  Edmund  Malone,  who  wrote 
just  a  century  later  still,  are  incorrect.  Malone, 
who  was  the  most  learned,  and  also  the  sanest, 
of  Shakespearian  commentators,  was  also  the  first 
person  to  take  the  scientific  view  of  a  biography. 
He  begins  his  account  by  drawing  up  a  list  of 
all  the  people  in  the  seventeenth  century  who 
might  have  written  Shakespeare's  life  and  failed 
to  take  advantage  of  their  opportunity,  persons 
like  Dugdale    and    Fuller,  who    were    content  with 

D  2 


36  SHAKESPEARE 

a   perfunctory  half-dozen  lines,   when   all    the  time 
Shakespeare's  own   daughter  Judith  was    alive   and 
waiting     to     be     questioned.       She    survived    until 
1662.      Then    he   gives    a    list   of    all    the   persons 
whom    Rowe    might   have   consulted   and    failed    to 
consult,    persons    in    the    second    line    of  tradition, 
but     still     trustworthy    evidence.      And     then     he 
passes    to    what    he    himself    had     been    able     to 
gather,  no    longer,  alas,   from   the   living  voice,  but 
by  researches   among   official    papers    in    Warwick- 
shire   and    Worcester,    the    Public    Record    Office, 
and    other  places.     I    am    proposing   on    this   occa- 
sion   to    review    what     facts     of     any    importance 
have    been    thus    gleaned    from    the    rubbish-heap 
of  time,  whether   by    Malone   himself  or  his   inde- 
fatigable    successor,    Halliwell-Phillipps,     or     more 
recently  by  Mr.   Sidney   Lee,  partly  for  their  own 
interest,    as   showing   what  were    the   outward    con- 
ditions   under   which    so    rare    a    genius   was    bred 
and    flourished,   but    still    more    for  any    light    they 
may    throw  upon   the   character    of  the    great   poet 

himself 

Let  me  begin  by  a  word  upon  his  name.  It 
has  parallels  in  Shakelaunce,  and  Shakeshaft,  and 
one  or  two  more ;  and  we  may  learn  that  to 
shake  a  spear  meant  simply  to  "wield"  it,  from 
such  a  passage  as  this  in  Spenser's  "  Faerie 
Queene"  (ii.  8,  14)  : 

"  Gold  all  is  not  that  doth  golden  seem, 
Ne  all  good  knights  that  shake  well  spear  and  shield." 


SHAKESPEARE  37 

We  may  take  it,  then,  that  Shakespeare's  remote 
ancestor  was  a  warrior,  though  not  of  course  a 
knight ;  for  in  the  thirteenth  century,  when  such 
surnames  first  came  into  use,  and  for  some  cen- 
turies after,  the  name  of  Shakespeare  was  ex- 
ceedingly common,  so  common,  indeed,  that  an 
Oxford  student  who  had  inherited  the  name 
before  it  became  famous,  changed  it  to  Saunders, 
quod  vile  reputattim. 

The  ancestors  of  William  Shakespeare  are  be- 
lieved to  have  been  substantial  yeomen  for  some 
generations,  but  they  come  but  dimly  into  the 
light  of  records  till  the  poet's  father  migrated  to 
Stratford  from  the  neighbouring  village  of  Snitter- 
field,  where  his  father  Richard  had  land,  and  then 
at  once  we  learn  something  about  him.  He  is 
summoned  on  April  29,  1552,  with  two  other 
residents  in  Henley  Street,  Adrian  Quiney  and 
Humphry  Reynolds,  "  for  making  a  heap  of 
refuse  in  the  street,  against  the  order  of  the 
court,"  and  is  fined  \2d.  Four  years  later  he 
has  gained  enough  substance  to  buy  two  houses 
(one,  the  present  Museum  in  Henley  Street),  and 
then  he  marries  a  local  heiress,  and  at  once 
becomes  a  person  of  importance  in  the  common- 
wealth ;  passing  through  all  the  grades  of  civic 
office,  burgess,  constable,  affeeror,  chamberlain, 
alderman,  at  this  point  becoming  Master  Shake- 
speare, till,  in  1568,  he  attains  the  supreme 
honours   of    the    borough    by   being   elected   high- 

434572 


38  SHAKESPEARE 

bailiff.  The  lad}-  he  had  married  was  the 
daughter  of  a  wealthy  farmer  of  Wilmcote,  who 
was  the  owner  of  his  father's  farriT  at  Snittcrfield  ; 
she  bore  the  pleasant  name  of  Mary  Arden,  and 
was  (or  was  said  to  be)  of  some  kin  with  those 
great  Warwickshire  people — Roman  Catholics  and 
Recusants— the  Ardens  of  Park  Hall,  and  she 
brought  her  husband,  besides  ready  money,  a 
house  and  sixty  acres  of  land  called  Asbies, '  and 
same  other  property  at  Snitterfield. 

After  losing  two  children,  John  and  Mary 
Shakespeare  had  a  boy  born  to  them  at  the  end 
of  April  1564,  whom  they  christened  William, 
and  he,  having  escaped  the  plague  that  year, 
which  carried  off  a  sixth  of  the  population  of 
Stratford,  no7i  sine  dis  animosus  i?ifans,  would  have 
been  four  years  old  when  his  father  was  chief 
magistrate,  and  so  grew  into  boyhood  as  the  son 
of  one  of  the  most  considerable  men  in  the 
borough.  The  question  has  been  much  can- 
vassed as  to  his  father's  business ;  and  as  the 
discussion  about  it  is  characteristic  of  the  pro- 
cess by  which  the  facts   of  Shakespeare's  life  have 

'  We  hear  a  good  deal,  by  and  by,  about  this  estate  of  Asbies. 
John  Shakespeare  mortgaged  it  in  1578  to  his  brother-in-law,  Edmund 
Lambert,  and  ten  years  later,  when  lie  parted  with  the  Snittcrfield 
property  to  raise  money  for  its  recovery,  he  was  told  he  must  not 
only  repay  the  loan  but  clear  all  other  debts  ;  and  this  he  was  not 
able  to  do.  Nine  years  later,  when  William  Shakespeare  had  become 
prosperous,  a  suit  was  instituted  for  its  recovery  ;  but  there  is  no 
record  of  any  decree,  and  the  property  did  not  come  back  to  the 
Shakespeares. 


SHAKESPEARE  39 

been    ascertained,    I    may   be    allowed    to    illustrate 
that  process  by  this  one  instance. 

Aubrey,  the  gossiping  antiquary,  writing  in 
1680,  had  mentioned  the  tradition  that  Shake- 
speare's father  was  a  butcher,  and  that  the  son, 
as  a  boy,  exercised  his  father's  trade  ;  adding  that 
*'  when  he  killed  a  calf  he  would  do  it  in  a  high 
style  and  make  a  speech."  Rowe  in  his  "  Life," 
which  was  based  on  the  traditions  gleaned  by 
Betterton,  states  that  John  Shakespeare  was  "  a 
considerable  dealer  in  wool,"  and  all  sensitive  people 
in  the  eighteenth  century  were  immensely  relieved 
at  finding  that  Shakespeare's  father,  and  presumably 
Shakespeare  himself,  had  dealt  with  the  outside 
rather  than  the  inside  of  the  sheep's  carcase.  Then 
Malone  set  out  on  his  researches  and  discovered 
from  the  Stratford  records  that  John  Shakespeare  is 
referred  to  as  a  glover,  and  he  pointed  a  polite  finger 
both  at  Aubrey  and  at  Rowe.  Finally  Mr.  Halli- 
well-Phillipps  comes  along,  and  produces  from  a  Strat- 
ford manuscript  particulars  of  two  glovers  who 
used  other  trades ;  one  of  them,  a  certain  George 
Perry,  who,  "  besides  his  glover's  trade,  useth 
buying  and  selling  of  wool."  So  we  have  the 
woolman  and  the  glover  reconciled ;  and  very 
reasonably,  for  the  gloves  most  in  use  at  Stratford 
would  have  been  thick  sheepskin  gloves.  But  no 
instance  has  been  discovered  of  the  same  man 
being  both  glover  and  butcher  :  and  as  glovers 
were    frequently    tanners,    and    tanners    by    statute 


40  SHAKESPEARE 

were  prohibited  from  being  butchers,  it  is  almost 
certain  that  the  tradition  that  Shakespeare's  father 
was  a  butcher  must  be  discredited,  especially  as 
he  is  officially  described  as  a  glover  on  two 
occasions  thirty  years  apart.  He  is  sometimes 
described  simply  as  a  yeoman,  and  we  know  from 
the  Stratford  records  that  he  trafficked  in  the 
produce  of  his  farms,  selling  at  one  time  timber, 
at  another  corn,  at  another  wool. 

But  whatever  may  have  been  John  Shake- 
speare's business  or  businesses,  the  important  fact 
for  us  is  that,  whereas  for  twenty  years  and  more 
he  succeeded,  by  and  by  he  failed.  The  late 
Professor  Baynes,  who  wrote  the  Life  of  Shake- 
speare in  the  "  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,"  dis- 
covered in  him  the  sign  of  "  a  sanguine  unheedful 
temper "  in  his  neglect  to  remove  that  heap  of 
refuse  in  Henley  Street.  But  such  unheedfulness 
was  the  rule  in  Stratford.  Six  years  later  John 
Shakespeare  is  fined  for  "  not  keeping  his  gutter 
clean,"  along  with  four  other  residents,  one  of 
them  Master  Bailiff  himself;  and  there  is  good 
evidence  that  it  was  William  Shakespeare's  in- 
difference in  such  matters  to  which  he  owed  the 
fever  from  which  he  died.  Mr.  Baynes  is,  per- 
haps, more  plausible  in  his  conjecture  that  John 
Shakespeare  was  of  a  social  and  pleasure-loving 
nature  (and  so  inclined  to  be  lavish  of  his  means), 
from  the  fact  that  it  was  during  his  year  as  bailiff, 
and    presumably    by   his    invitation,   that    for    the 


SHAKESPEARE  4I 

first  time  Stratford  was  visited  by  companies  of 
players.  I  mention  these  details  about  the  father 
because  it  is  important  for  us  to  realise  in  what 
sort  of  social  surroundings  the  son  grew  to  man- 
hood. To  call  Shakespeare,  as  is  sometimes  done, 
"  the  son  of  a  Warwickshire  peasant,"  gives  no  idea 
of  the  true  facts  about  his  breeding.  To  begin 
with,  he  would  never  have  known,  as  too  many 
peasants  at  all  times  have  known,  the  demoralising 
pinch  of  hunger  ;  at  his  worst  straits  for  money 
his  father  was  never  driven  to  sell  his  house 
property  in  Stratford  ;  he  would  never  have 
known  either  the  still  more  demoralising  cringing 
before  his  so-called  betters,  which  is  so  often  in 
the  blood  of  the  peasant  class,  the  heirs  of  the 
old  serfs  :  for  traders,  in  the  provinces  as  much  as 
in  London,  were  accustomed  to  hold  their  heads 
high,  because  they  managed  their  own  affairs. 
Then  again,  although  it  is  probable  that  neither 
of  Shakespeare's  parents  could  write,  it  does  not 
follow  that  they  could  not  read  ;  at  any  rate  they 
would  see  the  best  society  there  was  in  the  little 
market-town.  And,  if  we  remember  that  the 
poet's  mother  prided  herself  on  being  a  gentle- 
woman by  family,  although  brought  up  as  a 
yeoman's  daughter  (and  no  persons  are  so  careful 
of  gentle  traditions  as  those  who  are  a  little  better 
born  than  those  among  whom  their  lot  is  cast), 
we  may  guess  that  Shakespeare's  home  was  not  an 
ill   nursery   for   one   who   was    presently   to    stand 


42  SHAKESPEARE 

before  kings,  and — what  is  of  more  consequence 
— was  to  hold  up  to  the  English  people  the 
highest  ideal  of  womanhood  ever  presented  to 
them  by  any  of  their  great  writers. 

At  seven  years  old'  or  thereabout  William  would 
have  been  sent  to  the  Grammar  School  of  Stratford, 
where  the  curriculum  was  probably  that  of  the  other 
schools  of  the  period  :  Lily's  Latin  Grammar  and 
a  book  of  Latin  dialogues  to  start  with  ;  then  the 
Distichs  of  Dionysius  Cato,  and  ^sop's  Fables; 
then  in  the  fourth  year  some  easy  passages  of 
Cicero,  and  parts  of  Ovid's  "  Metamorphoses," 
and,  not  least,  the  very  popular  eclogues  of  a 
Renaissance  scholar,  John  Baptist  Mantuanus.  If 
he  remained  longer  at  school  he  would  proceed  to 
Virgil,  Horace,  Terence,  or  Plautus. 

It  is  evident  from  Shakespeare's  plays  that 
their  writer  had  gone  through  a  Grammar  School 
course.  "The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor"  shews 
us  the  first-form  boy  being  catechised  in  his 
Accidence  ;  and  for  an  example  of  the  colloquial 
Latin  which  the  Grammar  School  taught,  it  is 
enough  to  refer  to  the  conversation  of  Holofernes 
and  Sir  Nathaniel  in  "  Love's  Labour's  Lost," 
where  the  schoolmaster  interlards  his  remarks  with 
scrappy  sentences  out  of  the  phrase  book,  like 
Satis  quod  suffidt ;  Novi  hoininem  tanquavi  te : 
while      the     parson     not      being     in     such      good 

'  Cf.   I  Parnassus  v.  663,   "  interpreting  pjieriUs  confabulat tones 
to  a  company  of  .f^f^/z-year-old  apes." 


SHAKESPEARE  43 

practice,  and  endeavouring  to  emulate  him,  trips 
and  falls.  Holofernes  also  quotes  the  first  line 
from  Mantuanus's  eclogues :  "  Fauste,  precor 
gelida  quando  pecus  omne  sub  umbra  Ruminat," 
and  exclaims  :  "  Ah,  good  old  Mantuan,  I  may 
speak  of  thee  as  the  traveller  doth  of  Venice : 
Old  Mantuan,  Old  Mantuan !  who  understandeth 
thee  not,  loves  thee  not." 

I  need  not  stay  to  point  out  the  many  refer- 
ences in  Shakespeare's  plays  to  the  writings  of 
Ovid — but  when  persons  wish  to  reduce  the 
"  small  Latin "  that  Ben  Jonson  allowed  his 
friend  Shakespeare  to  nothing  at  all,  it  is  worth 
while  to  remember  that  the  motto  from  Ovid 
which  Shakespeare  prefixed  to  the  "Venus  and 
Adonis"  was  from  a  poem — the  Amoves — of  which 
at  the  time  there  was  no  published  translation  in 
English.  It  is  interesting  also  to  remember  that 
one  of  the  few  books  which  contain  what  may  be 
a  genuine  autograph  of  Shakespeare  is  an  Aldinc 
copy  of  Ovid's  "  Metamorphoses."  It  is  in  the 
Bodleian  Library,  and  passed  'the  eye  of  Mr. 
Coxe,  who  was  perhaps  the  most  acute  detector 
of  forgeries  who  ever  presided  over  a  library. 
On  the  other  hand  (and  in  view  of  recent  con- 
troversies this  may  be  the  more  important  con- 
sideration), that  Shakespeare's  classical  knowledge 
was  not  that  of  a  first-rate  scholar  like  Ben 
Jonson  or  Francis  Bacon,  any  one  may  see  for 
himself  who  will  take  up    the    Roman   plays  ;    the 


44  SHAKESTEARE 

marvellous  success  of  those  plays  in  reproducing 
the  ancient  Roman  spirit  is  clue  entirely  to  the 
vigour  of  the  poet's  imagination,  working  upon 
the  material  supplied  in  Plutarch's  Lives,  which 
he  read  in  Sir  Thomas  North's  translation.  But 
where  North  blunders,  Shalcespearc  blunders  ; 
he  made  no  attempt  to  go  behind  his  crib,  and 
he  blunders  where  North  does  not  blunder, 
through  ignorance  of  Roman  constitutional  history, 
confusing  the  functions  of  tribune  and  prtnetor.' 
If  any  one  is  tempted  to  think  that  it  is  classical 
knowledge,  and  not  imagination,  that  is  respon- 
sible for  the  success  of  Shakespeare's  Roman 
plays,  let  him  turn  to  Ben  Jonson's  "  Sejanus " 
and  "  Catiline,"  every  line,  almost,  of  which  is 
supported  by  references  to  authorities,  and  then 
consult  the  verdict  of  the  playgoers  of  the  period  ; 
here  is  one  by  an  Oxford  scholar,  Leonard  Digges : 

"  So  have  I  scene  wlien  Cii^sar  woukl  appeare — 
And  on  the  stage  at  half-sword  parley  were 
Brutus  and  Cassius — oh  how  the  audience 
Were  ra\'ish'd  !  with  what  wonder  they  went  thence  ; 
When  some  new  day  they  would  not  brooke  a  line 
Of  tedious  (though  well  labour'd)  Catiline  ; 
Sejanus  too  was  irksome." 


'  Plutarch  says  that  a  Roman  general  standing  for  the  consulship 
used  to  appear  in  ihe  Forum  with  his  toga  only,  without  the  tunic 
beneath  it,  so  as  to  display  his  scars  more  readily.  Amyot  used  the 
phrase  "  une  robe  simple."  North,  who  translated  from  Amyot,  mis- 
took the  sense  of  "simple,"  and  rendered  the  phrase  by  "a  poor 
gown."  Shakespeare  paraphrased  this  into  the  "napless  vesture  of 
humility." 


SHAKESPEARE  45 

Of    Shakespeare's    education    outside    the    walls 
of    the     Stratford    Grammar    School,    every    one's 
imagination    will    furnish    him    with    a    better   ac- 
count than  I  can  pretend  to  give.     But  we  must  not 
Wget   that    on    his    holidays    the    boy  would    have 
opportunities    of    making    acquaintance    (from    the 
outside)  with  what  (from  the  inside)  he  was  to  come 
to   know    as    his    own    profession.     Every    Corpus 
Christi     at     Coventry    (only    thirteen     miles    from 
Stratford)   there  was  performed  a  cycle    of  miracle 
plays;  and    when     Hamlet    speaks     of    "outdoing 
Termagant,"  and  "out-Heroding  Herod,"  and  when 
Bottom  speaks  of  acting  in  a  "  Cain-coloured  "  beard, 
and  Celia  calls  Orlando's  hair  "  something  browner 
than   Judas's,"  we    know  that  the  playwright  is  re- 
minding  the   audience    of    what    he    and    they   re- 
membered in  their  young  days  of  the  actors  in  such 
pageants.     But    the   year    1569,   when    Shakespeare 
was  only  five  years   old,  saw   the  introduction  into 
Stratford  of  actors  of  another  type,  a    professional 
company,   the    Queen's   own  players    from    London, 
who  had  come  by  leave  of  Mr.  Bailiff  Shakespeare, 
and  opened  their  visit  by  a  free  performance  before 
the  council. 

What,  one  wonders,  were  the  plays  which  on 
this  first  occasion  they  brought  with  them  ?  We 
know  that  in  this  very  year  a  small  boy  at 
Gloucester,  named  Willis,  of  the  same  age  as 
Shakespeare,  had  witnessed,  as  he  stood  between 
his    father's    knees,    a   morality  called    the    "  Cradle 


46  SHAKESPEARE 

of  Security,"  which  he  describes  ;  ^  did  the  five- 
year-old  Shakespeare  in  the  same  way  peep 
through  his  father's  knees  at  the  players  ;  and, 
if  so,  what  was  the  play  ?  Was  it  a  morality  of 
the  same  old-fashioned  type — or  was  it,  perhaps, 
the  fire-new  drama  written  by  the  Master  of 
Trinity  Hall,  Thomas  Preston,  then  being  acted 
in  town,  "  The  Lamentable  Tragedy,  mixed  full  of 
pleasant  mirth,  conteyning  the  Life  of  Cambises, 
King  of  Persia "  ?  Falstaff,  at  any  rate,  knew 
what  it  meant  to  "  speak  in  passion,  in  King 
Cambyses'  vein "  ;  or  was  it  again  "  The  Tragical 
Comedy  of  Apius  and  Virginia,"  written  by  one 
R.  B.,  parts  of  which  seem  to  have  suggested 
"  that  tedious  brief  scene  of  young  Pyramus  and 
his  love  Thisbe — very  tragical  mirth,"  which 
Peter  Quince  and  his  fellows  presented  before 
the  Duke  of  Athens.  Was  this  the  sort  of  thing 
young  Shakespeare  heard  ? — 

"  {Enter  JUDGE  APIUS.) 

"  The  Furies  fell  of  Limbo  lake 
My  princely  days  do  short ; 
All  drowned  in  deadly  ways  I  live, 
That  once  did  joy  in  sport. 
O  Gods  above  that  rule  the  skies, 
Ve  babes  that  brag  in  bliss. 
Ye  goddesses,  ye  graces,  you, 
What  burning  brunt  is  this  ? 
Bend  down  your  ire,  destroy  me  quick, 
Or  else  to  grant  me  grace. 
No  more  but  that  my  burning  breast 
Virginia  may  embrace." 

'  Halliwell-Phillipps,  Life  of  Shakespeare,  i.  41. 


SHAKESPEARE  47 

We  can  imagine  the  learned  Judge  continuing  in 
the  very  words  of  Pyramus  : — 

"  But  stay  ;— O  spite  ! 

But  mark  ; — Poor  knight, 
What  dreadful  dole  is  here  ? 

Eyes,  do  you  see  ? 

How  can  it  be  ? 
O  dainty  duck  !  O  dear  ! 

"  Thy  mantle  good, 

What,  stain'd  with  blood  ? 
Approach,  ye  furies  fell  I 

O  fates  !  come,  come  ; 

Cut  thread  and  thrum  ; 
Quail,  crush,  conclude,  and  quell !  " 

Shakespeare  in  after  days  could  afford  to  laugh 
good-naturedly  at  Cambyses  and  Judge  Apius, 
no  less  than  at  Termagant  and  Herod ;  but  we 
cannot  exaggerate  the  probable  influence  on  his 
imagination  of  his  first  introduction  to  the  Re- 
naissance drama,  whether  it  came  then  or  a  few 
years  later.  Here  was  a  new  world  of  thought 
and  passion,  brought  vividly  before  his  eyes  by 
these  players  ;  one  had  but  to  sit  still,  and  the 
whole  cycle  of  the  world's  inner  history,  its  joys 
and  sorrows,  wrongs  and  revenges,  could  pass 
before  his  eyes,  as  in  Friar  Bacon's  magic  glass. 
If  youth  can  still  be  stage-struck,  when  the  stage 
is  a  commonplace  of  our  civilisation,  we  need  not 
doubt  that  the  visits  of  these  first  travelling  com- 
panies, when  acting  was  a  new  art,  brought  to 
the  imaginative    soul    of  the   youthful    Shakespeare 


48  SHAKESrEARE 

dreams   and    hopes   that    by    and    by    moulded    his 
life. 

Just  one  thing  more  about  this  topic  of  Shake- 
speare's education.  What  did  he  read  at  home? 
One  of  those  wiseacres  who  think  that  Shake- 
speare's plays  were  written  by  James  I.'s  philo- 
sophical Lord  Chancellor,  Francis  Bacon,  has 
pointed  out  to  us  that  Shakespeare  in  his  will 
says  nothing  about  his  library— a  remark  that, 
it  may  be  useful  to  remember,  applies  no  less  to 
the  "judicious  Hooker,"  who  probably  possessed 
some  books  all  the  same.'  Mr.  Halliwell-Phillipps 
takes  a  gloomy  view  of  the  amount  of  literature 
to  be  found  within  the  houses  at  Stratford.  "  Ex- 
clusive of  Bibles,  Church  Services,  Psalters  and 
Education  manuals,"  he  writes,  "there  were  cer- 
tainly not  more  than  two  or  three  dozen  books, 
if  so  many,  in  the  whole  town."  Even  so  one 
may  hazard  a  guess  that  what  books  there  were 
found  their  way  to  Henley  Street.  We  may  be  sure 
that  Tottell's  "  Book  of  Songs  and  Sonnets,"  first 
published  in  1557,  of  which  eight  editions  were  issued 
in  thirty  years,  was  known  in  the  district  ;  for  did 
not  Master  Slender  of  Gloucestershire  possess  a 
copy  ?  And  why  should  not  new  books  have  come 
down  occasionally  from  London  ?  When  Shake- 
speare was  fifteen,  his  school  friend    Richard   Field, 

'  There  is  no  mention  of  books  in  the  will  of  Richard  Barnefield, 
or  of  John  Marston,  or  of  Samuel  Daniel.  Too  few  contemporary 
poets  had  any  occasion  to  make  a  will. 


SHAKESPEARE  49 

who  by  and  by  published  the  "  Venus  and  Adonis," 
left  Stratford  and  his  father's  tanyard,  to  be  bound 
apprentice  to  a  London  printer,  and  Field's  brother 
and  two  other  Stratford  boys  were  apprenticed  to 
London  printers  a  few  years  later  or  earlier,'  which 
of  itself  proves  that  the  art  of  printing  was  recog- 
nised in  the  little  community  of  Stratford  ;  and 
I  for  one  choose  to  believe  that  young  Richard 
Field  would  have  sent  down  to  his  friend  at 
Stratford  any  books  he  could  get  hold  of,  and 
certainly  a  book  which  at  the  end  of  that  same 
year  made  a  great  stir — the  "  Shepheard's  Calendar," 
by  Edmund  Spenser. 

We  learn  from  Rowe,  who  had  the  information 
from  Betterton  the  actor,  who  is  supposed  to  have 
gone  to  Stratford  in  1708  to  collect  intelligence, 
that  "the  narrowness  of  his  father's  circumstances, 
and  the  want  of  his  assistance  at  home,  forced  him 
to  withdraw  his  son  from  school."  He  does  not 
say  when ;  and  he  adds  that  "  upon  his  leaving 
school  he  seems  to  have  given  entirely  into  that 
way  of  living  which  his  father  proposed  to  him," 
which  is  what  might  be  expected  in  a  good  son, 
but  does  not  help  us  to  determine  his  calling. 
Aubrey  tells  us  that  he  exercised  his  father's  trade, 
which  may  have  been  so,  especially  as  his  marriage 
at  eighteen  would  seem  to  prove  that  he  was  not 
apprenticed  to  a  very  strict  master ;  for  apprentices 

'  See  introduction  to   Venus  and  Adonis  fac-simile  by  Sidney  Le 
P-  39- 

E 


50  SHAKESPEARE 

who  married  before  they  were  out  of  their  articles 
lost  their  freedom.  There  is  a  further  tradition 
which  Aubrey  received  from  Beeston  the  actor, 
who  would  have  had  it  in  a  direct  line,  not  from 
gossiping  townsfolk,  but  from  the  poet  himself; 
and  I  give  it  in  Aubrey's  own  words :  "  Though 
as  Ben  Jonson  says  of  him  that  he  had  but  little 
Latin  and  less  Greek,  he  understood  Latin  pretty 
well,  for  he  had  been  in  his  younger  years  a 
schoolmaster  in  the  country."  A  youth  of  proved 
abilities,  with  a  known  taste  for  letters,  might  well 
have  been  employed  as  usher  at  the  Grammar 
School  when  his  father's  business  failed. 

We  must  pass  now  to  speak  of  that  very  critical 
event  in  the  life  of  the  poet,  his  marriage,  and 
his  subsequent  departure  from  Stratford.  I  will 
give  as  shortly  as  possible  the  ascertained  facts. 
In  the  Registry  of  the  diocese  of  Worcester  there 
is  a  bond  dated  November  28,  1582,  for  the  issue 
of  a  licence  for  the  marriage  of  William  Shake- 
speare  and    Ann    Hathwey,^    with    once   asking    of 

'  The  late  Mr.  C.  J.  Elton's  attempt  to  prove  that  this  Anne  was 
not  the  daughter  of  Richard  Hathaway  of  Shotlcry  fills  me  with 
amazement.  On  the  one  side  are  the  facts  (i)  that  the  persons  who 
applied  for  Anne's  marriage  licence  also  attested  Richard's  will,  (2) 
that  Richard's  shepherd  lent  Mrs.  Shakespeare  money.  "  These," 
says  Mr.  Elton,  "are  only  subsidary  details."  All  he  has  to  urge 
on  the  other  side  is  that  in  Richard  Ilathaway's  will  his  daughter  is 
called  Agnes,  and  that  "as  early  as  the  thirty-third  of  Henry  VI. 
it  was  decided  that  Anne  and  Agnes  arc  distinct  baptismal  names 
and  not  convertible."  To  which  the  layman  cannot  but  reply  that 
there  would  have  been  no  need  to  decide  the  point  if  the  names 
had  not  been  convertible  by  ordinary  custom.     Mr.  Halliwell-PhilUpps 


SHAKESPEARE  $1 

the  banns,  such  a  bond  (to  indemnify  the  bishop 
from  any  action  arising  out  of  the  granting  of  the 
licence)  being  the  usual  way  of  assuring  the 
authorities  that  there  was  no  canonical  impedi- 
ment to  the  marriage  and  that  the  necessary  con- 
sents had  been  obtained.  On  the  previous  day 
a  licence  was  issued  to  a  William  Shakespeare  to 
marry  Ann  Whately,  of  Temple  Grafton.  There 
seems  here,  at  first  sight,  the  outline  of  a  romance. 
Imagination  conjures  up  the  figure  of  young 
William  galloping  off  to  Worcester  "  post-haste 
for  a  licence,"  as  Mr.  Jingle  says,  to  marry  one 
lady,  and  the  friends  of  another,  with  whom 
presumably  there  was  a  pre-contract,  pursuing 
him,  and  binding  him  down  to  marry  with  only 
one  week's  grace.  But  the  romance  will  not 
bear  investigation.  The  licence  and  the  bond 
must  refer  to  the  same  marriage,  or  else  you 
have  a  bond  without  a  licence,  and  a  licence 
without  a  bond,  and  that  the  bond  in  the  one 
case  should  be  lost  and  the  licence  not  be  entered 
in  the  other  is  exceedingly  improbable.^  More- 
over, there  is  no  power  even  in  a  bishop's  licence 
to  compel  a  freeborn  Englishman  to  marry  against 

has  collected  instances  (ii.  185).  Thus  :  "  Thomas  Greene  and  Agnes 
his  wife,"  in  a  birth  register  of  1602,  are  referred  to  three  years  later  as 
"  Thomas  Greene  and  Anne  his  wife." 

'  See  "  Shakespeare's  Marriage,"  by  J.  W.  Gray.  Mr.  Gray  has  been 
at  the  pains  to  go  through  the  Bishop's  Registers  at  Worcester,  and 
has  found  other  cases  of  blunder  between  the  surname  on  the  licence 
and  that  on  the  bond. 

E  2 


52  SHAKESPEARE 

his  will  ;  particularly  when    he  is    a    minor,  and  an 

apprentice.     The    need    to   obtain    a    licence    at    all 

arose    from    the    fact   that   only    by    licence    could 

marriages   be  solemnised    at  certain    seasons  of  the 

year  ;    one  such  close  time  extended   from  Advent 

to    the   octave   of    Epiphany.      When    therefore    a 

licence   was    applied    for   on    November    27,   three 

days   before  Advent,  it  looks  as  if  something  had 

happened  which  would  make  it  impossible  to  wait 

until    January    13  ;    and    this    might    be   the    fact 

that  Shakespeare  had  to  leave  Stratford   in  haste  ; 

and    a    recent   writer   on    the    subject,    Mr.    J.    W. 

Gray,  finds    the    need    for   haste   in    the   traditional 

act   of    poaching   which    inflamed    against   him    the 

wrath  of  Sir  Thomas  Lucy, 

The  objection  to  that  theory  is  that  if  we  send 
Shakespeare  away  from  Stratford  in  November 
1582,  we  must  bring  him  back  again,  because, 
although  his  eldest  daughter  Susanna  was  born 
at  the  end  of  May  following,  the  twins  Hamnet 
and  Judith  were  not  born  until  February  1585  ; 
and  if  Shakespeare  was  safe  in  returning  home, 
it  is  hard  to  see  v/hy  there  was  need  for  so 
precipitate  a  flight.  Of  course,  we  may  con- 
sider that  the  threatened  storm  blew  over,  that 
it  was  a  first  offence,  and  that  Sir  Thomas  Lucy 
proved  tractable.  Another  suggestion  recently 
made'  is  that   Anne  Hathaway's  father,  whose  will 

'  See  letter  from  Mr.  T.  Le  Marchanl  Douse,  in  7>W^  (supplement), 
April  21,  1905. 


SHAKESPEARE  53 

was  proved  in  July  of  this  year,  having  bequeathed 
his  daughter  the  sum  of  £,6y  3s.  4d.  to  be  paid  her 
on  the  day  of  her  viarriage,  the  prospect  of  such  a 
marriage  portion  induced  the  happy  pair  to  pre- 
cipitate matters  with  the  consent  of  the  bride's 
friends  as  soon  as  the  money  was  forthcoming. 
For  it  is  significant  that  the  two  sureties  to  the 
marriage  bond  are  two  farmers  of  Shottery,  Fulk 
Sandells  and  John  Richardson,  one  of  whom  was 
a  witness  to  Richard  Hathaway's  will,  and  the 
other  its  "supervisor."  This,  I  confess,  appears 
to  me  to  be  the  only  plausible  explanation  yet 
offered  for  the  hasty  wedding.  I  do  not  think 
that  the  regularising  of  the  union  into  which 
Shakespeare  had  entered  with  Anne  Hathaway 
furnishes  a  sufficient  motive  for  the  extreme  haste 
of  the  proceeding. 

That  the  departure  for  London,  whenever  it 
did  occur,  was  caused  by  the  action  of  Sir  Thomas 
Lucy,  admits  of  little  doubt.^  We  have  the  tradition 
of  it  which  Betterton  found  at  Stratford,  and  we 
have  an  earlier  reference  to  the  tradition  in  the 
account    of    a    Gloucestershire   archdeacon    of    the 

'  Malone  doubted  the  poaching  tradition  on  the  ground  that  there 
is  no  evidence  of  a  statutable  park  at  Charlecote  in  Elizabeth's  reign. 
Halliwell-Phillipps  nevertheless  produced  evidence  that  the  Sir  Thomas 
Lucy  of  1602  presented  a  buck  to  Lord  Keeper  Egerton,  so  that  there 
were  deer  to  steal ;  and  if  none  were  presented  to  the  Stratford  people, 
as  Malone  noted,  it  may  have  been  because  they  helped  themselves  too 
freely.  It  does  not  follow  because  Sir  Thomas,  not  having  the  Queen's 
licence,  could  not  indict  under  the  statute  (^  Eliz.),  that  he  had  not 
power  to  make  himself  unpleasant. 


54  SHAKESPEARE 

seventeenth  century  named  Davies,  who  describes 
Shakespeare  as  "much  given  to  all  unluckiness 
in  stealing  venison  and  rabbits,  particularly  from 
Sir-Lucy,  who  had  him  whipt,  and  at  last  made 
him  fly  his  native  country  to  his  great  advance- 
ment. But  his  revenge,"  continues  the  archdeacon, 
"was  so  great  that  he  is  his  Justice  Clodpate  [he 
means  Shallow],  and  calls  him  a  great  man,  and 
that  (in  allusion  to  his  name)  bore  three  louses 
rampant  for  his  arms." 

I  need  but  recall  to  your  recollection  the  famous 
scene  at  the  opening  of  "  The  Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor,"  where  Justice  Shallow  enters  in  a 
great  fury  of  indignation  against  Falstaff  for 
breaking  his  park  and  stealing  the  deer,  thereby 
abusing  in  his  person  a  very  ancient  family  whose 
members  for  three  hundred  years  had  signed 
themselves  "  armigero,"  and  "  borne  the  dozen 
white  luces  in  their  coat."  Upon  which  the 
kindly  Welsh  parson  Sir  Hugh  Evans,  misunder- 
standing the  kind  of  luces  referred  to — for  a  luce 
was  the  fish  generally  called  a  pike — and  also 
mistaking  the  nature  of  the  "  coat "  on  which  they 
figured,  remarks  : 

"  The  dozen  white  louses  do  become  an  old  coat  well." 

Now  the  pun  in  itself  is  so  poor  that  it  is 
inconceivable  Shakespeare  introduced  it  for  its 
own  sake  ;  and  when  we  remember  that  this  charge 
of  the  luce  had  been  associated  with  the  Lucy  family 


SHAKESPEARE  55 

ever  since  heraldry  was  a  science/  and  inevitably 
suggested  their  name,  it  is  put  beyond  reasonable 
doubt  that  Shakespeare  intended  a  personal  affront  ; 
while  by  substituting  twelve  luces  for  three,  which 
was  the  number  on  the  Lucy  coat,  he  kept  on  the 
windy  side  of  the  Star  Chamber.  We  cannot 
pretend  to  judge  Shakespeare  in  this  matter,  because 
we  do  not  know  the  extent  of  the  provocation  he 
had  received.  Tradition  says  he  was  "  whipt." 
Speaking  for  myself,  I  cannot  be  sorry  that  his 
resentment  took  this  shape,  because  it  has  supplied 
me,  times  without  number,  with  an  unanswerable 
question  to  put  to  those  persons  who  tell  one  that 
Shakespeare's  plays  were  written  by  Bacon :  viz. 
How  Bacon,  who  was  a  friend  and  correspondent 
of  Sir  Thomas  Lucy's,  can  be  conceived  making 
this  unprovoked  and  very  ungentlemanlike  jest 
upon  another  gentleman's  coat  of  arms?  Shake- 
speare at  the  date  of  "  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  " 
was  not  yet  "  a  gentleman  born."  I  need  not 
spend  time  in  endeavouring  to  show  that  this 
boyish  escapade  among  Sir  Thomas  Lucy's  deer 
did  not  permanently  ruin  Shakespeare's  character. 
It  would  be  a  poor  compliment  to  Shakespeare  to 
condone  a  breach  of  the  eighth  commandment. 
But   simple  justice  requires  me   to  explain    that  at 

'  See  notes  in  Malone,  viii.  1 1.  Under  the  names  oi ged  and  pike  this 
fish  was  borne,  also  in  "  canting  heraldry,"  by  the  families  of  Geddes, 
Pickering,  &c.  The  only  other  family  that  bore  the  hue  was  Way  in 
the  west  country  ;  but  with  them  it  was  sometimes  blazoned  simply  as 
"  fish,"  and  they  were  not  well-known  people  like  the  Lucys. 


$6  SHAKESrEARE 

this  period  deer-stealing  was  looked  upon  among 
respectable  people  with  even  greater  tolerance  than 
smuggling  two  centuries  later.  It  was  not  in  the 
least  blackguardly,  as  poaching  is  to-day.  It  was 
a  very  favourite  pastime,  for  instance,  with  Oxford 
undergraduates,  who  then  as  now  might  stand  as 
the  pattern  of  good  form.  We  find  it  chronicled 
without  special  comment  along  with  fencing, 
dancing,  and  hunting  the  hare,  among  the  youthful 
sports  of  a  certain  Bishop  of  Worcester.'  And 
there  was  a  proverb  of  the  day,  that  "venison 
is  nothing  so  sweet  as  when  it  is  stolen."  As  to 
the  date  of  the  incident  we  have  no  information. 
A  probable  date  seems  to  be  offered  about 
February  1585  when  the  twins  were  christened, 
for  Shakespeare  had  no  more  children ;  and  it 
may  be  significant  that  in  March  of  that  year 
Sir  Thomas  Lucy  was  in  charge  of  a  Bill  in  the 
House  of  Commons  for  the  preservation  of  game.^ 
If  Shakespeare  did  not  find  employment  at  a 
London  theatre  in  1585,  he  must  have  waited  till 
1587,  for  in  1586  the  theatres  were  closed  on 
account  of  the  Plague. 

Here,  then,  Shakespeare's  youth  ends.  For 
seven  years  after  1585  he  disappears  from  sight, 
lost  in  London ;  when  he  emerges  it  is  as  a 
leading  actor  and  playwright.  How  he  spent 
the    interval    is    mere    matter     of    conjecture ;  but 

'  Dr.  J.  Thornborough  (born  1552).     See  Malone,  ii.  13 
^  Malone,  ii.  131. 


SHAKESPEARE  57 

tradition  asserts  that  he  joined  the  theatre  in 
the  very  lowest  rank,  that  of  "servitor,"  and  so 
worked  his  way  up.  One  tradition  says  that  he 
began  outside  the  theatre  by  holding  the  horses 
of  the  gallants  who  rode  to  the  play,  before  he 
even  worked  his  way  in.  However  that  may 
be,  and  the  tradition  implies  the  knowledge  of 
a  very  short-lived  practice,  that  of  riding  to  the 
play,^  it  was  not  improbably  to  the  long  ap- 
prenticeship which  Shakespeare  served  to  the 
actor's  profession,  making  him  conversant  with 
the  stage  in  all  its  arrangements,  that  he  owed 
no  small  part  of  the  mastery  which  he  was 
by  and  by  to  display  as  a  dramatist.  In  the 
first  place,  he  gained  that  skill  in  stage-craft — 
the  arrangement  of  exits  and  entrances  and  so 
forth — which  only  experience  can  give ;  and 
which  makes  such  plays  as  "  The  Comedy  of 
Errors,"  or  such  scenes  as  the  forest  scene  in 
"A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,"  although  they 
are  most  confusing  to  read,  quite  simple  and 
straightforward  on  the  stage.  In  the  second 
place,  he  learned  how  to  develop  a  plot  in  a 
thoroughly  dramatic  fashion,  and  with  the  least 
possible  waste  of  time  and  energy.  It  must 
have  struck  everybody,  for  example,  how  well 
Shakespeare's  plays  open  ;  how  attention  is  at 
once  caught  and  held ;  and  the  main  action 
begins  without  delay.  Thirdly,  he  gained  the 
»  Halliwell-Phillipps,  i.  80. 


58  SHAKESPEARE 

eye  of  a  stage-manager  for  effective  "  business," 
Take,  for  an  example,  the  play  of  "  Macbeth." 
Shakespeare  the  poet  could  have  given  us  the 
wonderful  speeches  in  which  he  turns  the  old 
chronicle  into  traged}',  but  it  was  the  eye  of 
the  trained  actor  and  stage-manager  which  gave 
us  the  witch  scenes,  the  air-drawn  dagger,  the 
blood-stained  hands  that  seemed  to  pluck  at 
Macbeth's  eyes,  the  knocking  at  the  gate,  the 
sleep-walking — points  which  still  tell  upon  the 
audience,  as  they  did  when  it  was  first  put  upon 
the  stage.  And  not  only  did  these  seven  years 
advance  Shakespeare  in  the  knowledge  of  his 
profession,  they  advanced  him  also  in  general 
culture.  We  know  that  "  a  poet  is  born  and 
not  made " ;  but  Ben  Jonson  reminds  us  that 
"  a  good  poet's  made  as  well  as  born "  ;  and  he 
is  made  by  study  of  the  world  past  and  present, 
by  men  and  books.  Mr.  Sidney  Lee  has  just 
told  us  that  Shakespeare  had  read  some  of  the 
Italian  poets  of  the  Renaissance,  before  he  wrote 
his  "Venus  and  Adonis";  and  if  he  was  at  the 
pains  to  master  Italian,  we  may  be  sure  that  he 
read  whatever  he  found  worth  reading  in  his 
own  tongue.  Of  still  greater  consequence  was 
his  commerce  in  the  world  of  London  with  men 
of  all  sorts  and  conditions.  And  so  when  a 
certain  class  of  our  friends,  to  whom  I  have 
already  referred,  ask  us  how  we  think  it  possible 
that  a  young  man   from   the  Midlands  on   coming 


SHAKESPEARE  59 

up  to  town  could  produce,  perhaps  as  his  very 
first  play,  a  piece  so  free  from  everything  pro- 
vincial, and  so  full  of  character  and  wit  and 
courtly  manners,  as  "  Love's  Labour's  Lost,"  we 
may  at  least  reply,  without  raising  the  difficult 
point  of  genius,  that  seven  years  in  London  at 
the  impressionable  age  of  twenty-one  can  work 
great  changes  in  a  man's  experience  of  life  even 
to-day.     (On  "  Love's  Labour's  Lost"  see  p.  13.) 

When  we  first  meet  Shakespeare's  name  as  a 
player — in  any  formal  fashion — it  is  in  a  very 
important  document,  the  accounts  of  the  Queen's 
Treasurer  of  the  Chamber,  and  in  the  best 
company.     It  runs  thus  in  modern  spelling: — 

"  To  William  Kempe,  William  Shakespeare,  and  Richard 
Burbage,  servants  to  the  Ld.  Chamberlain,  upon  the 
councils  warrant,  dated  at  Whitehall  15  March  1594,  for 
2  several  comedies  or  interludes  shewed  by  them  before 
her  majesty  in  Christmas  time  last  past,  viz.  upon  St. 
Stephens  day  and  Innocents  day — ^13  6  8  and  by  way 
of  her  majesty's  reward  ^^6  13  4  in  all  ^2q.^^ 

Now  see  what  this  means :  Kemp  was  the 
greatest  comedian,  and  Burbage  the  greatest 
tragedian,  of  his  time ;  and  here  is  Shakespeare 
standing  between  them,  like  Garrick  between 
Tragedy  and  Comedy  in  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds' 
celebrated  picture,  a  third  with  the  two  heads 
of  his  profession.  After  that  indisputable  evi- 
dence to  the  rank  he  held  in  his  company  there 
is  hardly  need  to  go  in  search  of  other  testimony 


60  SHAKESPEARE 

that  he  was  a  competent  actor  ;  but  as  it  might 
perhaps  be  held  that  Shakespeare's  position  in 
the  company  was  due  chiefly  to  the  fact  that  he 
was  its  playwright,  it  may  be  well  to  note  that, 
two  years  before  this,  Chettle  the  dramatist  refers 
to  Shakespeare  in  a  pamphlet  as  ''excellent  in  the 
quality  he  professes," '  and  Aubrey  preserves  the 
opinion  of  an  old  actor,  William  Beeston,  who 
was  the  son  of  an  apprentice  of  Augustine  Phillips 
one  of  Shakespeare's  own  friends  and  colleagues, 
that  he  acted  "  exceedingly  well,"  and  contrasts 
him  on  that  point  with  Ben  Jonson,  who,  accord- 
ing to  the  same  authority,  "  was  never  a  good 
actor,  but  an  excellent  instructor."  It  is  noticeable, 
too,  that  we  find  Shakespeare's  name  standing 
first  on  the  list  of  actors  who  performed  Ben 
Jonson's  "  Every  Man  in  his  Humour,"  a  play 
which  his  good  nature  is  said  to  have  saved  from 
refusal  by  his  company.  By  the  side  of  such 
testimony  we  need  not  attach  importance  to  the 
exact  form  of  the  tradition  preserved  by  Rowe 
that  "the  top  of  his  performance  was  the  Ghost 
in  his  own  Hamlet,"  though  he  may  very  well 
have  played  the  part,  as  Garrick  did  after  him. 
The  only  other  stage  tradition  we  have  is  that  he 
was  accustomed  to  play  "  kingly  parts." 

If  Shakespeare  then  became  an  actor  and 
reached  the  top  of  his  "  quality "  after  working 
his  way  through  the  stages  of  call-boy  and  super- 

'  See  additional  note,  p.  78. 


SHAKESPEARE  6 1 

numerary,  we  know  for  a  certainty  that  when  he 
became  a  dramatist,  he  reached  the  top  of  that 
profession,  from  beginnings  as  little  dignified. 
When  he  came  to  London  the  leading  dramatists 
were  a  set  of  young  men,  most  of  them  from  the 
universities,  who  were  in  the  act  of  revolutionising 
the  stage — it  would  be  as  true  to  say,  creating  it. 
The  eldest  was  John  Lyly,  who  wrote  comedies 
chiefly  in  prose  ;  then  there  was  Thomas  Kyd — 
"sporting  Kyd,"  as  Ben  Jonson  calls  him  with  an 
ironic  play  upon  his  name — who  wrote  tragedies 
of  a  bloodthirsty  type,  among  them  a  tragedy 
of  "  Hamlet,"  which  Shakespeare  was  afterwards 
to  re-write  ;  George  Peele,  who  wrote  tragedies, 
comedies,  and  historical  plays  ;  Robert  Greene, 
who  also  wrote  everything,  but  notably  one  very 
charming  comedy  of  country  life  with  the  queer 
title  of  "  Friar  Bacon  and  Friar  Bungay,"  and, 
above  all,  there  was  Christopher  Marlowe.  Now 
if  we  turn  to  that  invaluable  document  the  Diary 
of  Henslowe,  proprietor  of  the  Rose  Theatre,  for  the 
year  1592,  we  find  in  his  cash  account  such  entries 
as  the  following  :  ^ 


t 

f    s. 

d. 

19  Feb. 

159^     Reed. 

at  fryer  bacune 

17 

3 

[Greene's  play. 

20    „ 

f  1 

mulomurco 
{i.e.  Muley 
Mulocco] 

29 

0 

[Peek's    "Battle 
Alcazar." 

of 

21    ,, 

If 

Orlando 

16 

6 

[An     early    play 
Greene's. 

of 

See  W.  W.  Greg's  edition,  p.  13. 


62 


2 

SHAKESPEARE 

£ 

s. 

d. 

23  Feb. 

159^ 

Reed,  at  spanes  como- 
dye  donne 
oracoe 

13 

6    [A     fore    piece     to 
Kyd's    "Spanish 
Tragedy." 

25    ., 

,,          Jeweofmalltuse 

50 

0    [Marlowe's  play. 

29    .. 

niulamulloco 

34 

0 

3  March  , ,  harey  the  6th    3168 

What  is  the  meaning  of  this  sudden  rise  in  the 
takings  at  the  theatre?  An  explanation  is  to  be 
found  in  a  remark  of  the  pamphleteer  Thomas 
Nash,  who  in  a  piece  called  "  Pierce  Penniless," 
licensed  in  August  of  that  year,  writes  : 

"  How  would  it  have  joyed  brave  Talbot  (the  terror  of 
the  French)  to  think  that  after  he  had  lain  200  years  in 
his  tomb,  he  should  triumph  again  on  the  stage,  and  have 
his  bones  new  embalmed  with  the  tears  of  ten  thousand 
spectators  at  least  (at  several  times)  who,  in  the  tragedian 
that  represents  his  person,  imagine  they  behold  him  fresh 
bleeding." 

Now,  whoever  wrote  the  original  draft  of  the 
"First  Part  of  King  Henry  VI.,"  certainly  the 
Talbot  scenes  were  added  or  re-written  by  Shake- 
speare, and  it  was  these  scenes  that,  according 
to  Nash,  made  the  success  of  the  piece.  A  second 
and  third  part  of  "  Henry  VI."  in  the  course  of 
the  same  year,  were,  in  the  same  way,  but  to  a 
far  greater  extent,  re-written  by  this  young  actor, 
and  their  success  we  can  gauge,  not  this  time 
from  a  shout  of  praise,  but  from  a  scream  of 
rage  sent  up  by  the  poor  dramatist  whose  work 
had  thus  been  worked  over.  (It  has  always  to 
be    borne    in    mind    in    discussing    the    Elizabethan 


SHAKESPEARE  63 

drama  that  plays  were    sold    out   and   out   by   the 
dramatists   to   one   or    other    company   of    actors  ; 
so   that  it  was  in  the  power  of  the  company,   and 
a  very  usual  custom,  to  have  the  plays,  when  they 
got  a  little  worn  by  use,  freshened,  either  by  the 
author,   or  by   a  new  hand.)^     In    this   autumn    of 
1592  the  dramatist   Greene  lay  a-dying,  and  from 
his   deathbed   he   made   a   solemn    address   to    his 
fellows,    Marlowe,    Peele,    and    others,    to    forsake 
their    vicious    courses — they    were    all    notoriously 
wild — and    to   live   repentant    lives   before   it    was 
too   late.      And   he   concludes   his   appeal    with    a 
rather   vague  sentence,   the  general  sense  of  which 
seems  to  be,  that  if  they  find  themselves   in  want 
they  must  not  look  to  the  players  for  help.     The 
players,   it   must    be   understood,    occupied    some- 
thing    of    the    same    position    in    regard    to    the 
dramatist    as    a    modern    publisher     does    to     his 
author.      The    publisher   is    more    likely    to    be    a 
capitalist   than    the   author.       Alleyn,   the    founder 
of    Dulwich    College,   Burbage,    Heminge,    Cundell, 
Shakespeare   himself,  made  fortunes  on    the   stage, 
while  Greene,  and  Marlowe,  and  Drayton,  and  many 
other    dramatists    were     put    to     shifts     to     make 
a  bare  living. 

"  Base-minded  men,  all-three  of  you  [says  Greene],  if  by 
my  misery  ye  be  not  warned;  for  unto  none  of  you,  like 

'  The  MS.  play  Sir  Tkofiias  More  in  the  British  Museum 
(Harl.  7368)  exhibits  these  phenomena  of  freshening.  There  are 
several  handwritings  ;  passages  are  crossed  through  and  others  added  ; 
and  new  drafts  are  pasted  over  old  ones. 


64  SHAKESPEARE 

me,  sought  those  burs  to  cleave ;  those  puppets,  I  mean, 
that  speak  from  our  mouths,  those  anticks  garnished  in  our 
colours.  .  .  .  Trust  them  not,  for  there  is  an  xipstart  croiv 
beautified  with  our  feathers,  that  with  his  '  tiger's  heart 
wrapt  in  a  player's  hide,'  supposes  he  is  as  well  able  to 
bombast  out  a  blank  verse  \i.e.  to  stuff  it  out  with  epithets] 
as  the  best  of  you  \  and  being  an  absolute  Johannes 
Factotum,  is,  in  his  own  conceit,  the  only  Shake-scene 
in  a  country." 

The  line  parodied  by  Greene  and  applied  to  its 
author  comes  in  the  Third  Part  oi Hemy  VI.  (i.  iv.  137), 
the  original  draft  of  which  play  may  well  have  been  in 
part  composed  by  Greene  himself.  Halliwell-Phillipps 
suggests  that  the  line  had  been  rendered  specially 
popular  through  effective  delivery.  What  Greene 
meant  by  'bombasting  out'  a  blank  verse  may  be 
understood  by  a  quotation  : 

"  O  tiger's  heart  wrapt  in  a  woman's  hide  ; 
How  couldst  thou  drain  the  life-blood  of  the  child, 
To  bid  the  father  wipe  his  eyes  withal. 
And  yet  be  seen  to  bear  a  woman's  face  ? 
Women  are  soft,  mild,  pitiful  and  flexible  : 
Thou  stern,  obdurate,  flinty,  rough,  remorseless." 

Now  if  we  can  suppose  Sir  Charles  VVyndham 
and  Mr.  Tree  taking  suddenly  to  writing  plays,  and 
successful  plays,  or  Mr.  Murray  and  Mr.  Methuen 
to  writing  successful  novels,  we  shall  form  some 
idea  of  the  horror  that  possessed  poor  Greene's 
imagination.  If  players  turned  playwright,  the 
playwright's  occupation  was  gone  ;  and  if,  in 
addition,    we    remember    the    contempt    in     which 


SHAKESPEARE  65 

the  players  were  held  by  these  poor  gentlemen 
— "  puppets  that  speak  from  our  mouths,"  "  anticks 
garnished  in  our  colours,"  "  burs  that  cleave " 
to  us,  we  shall  realise  the  consternation  that 
Shakespeare  had  inspired  in  this  poor  indignant 
spirit. 

We  come  upon  evidence  of  the  same  sort  of 
feeling  in  a  university  play  written  somewhat 
later,  where  a  character,  Studioso,  complains  of 
the  actors  that, 

"  With  mouthing  words  that  better  wits  have  framed 
They  purchase  lands  and  now  esquires  are  named,"  ^ 

and  in  a  scene  where  Kempe  and  Burbage  are 
represented  as  interviewing  Cambridge  scholars  as 
likely  recruits  for  their  company — who  at  need 
would  write  a  part  as  well  as  act  one — Kempe 
is  made  to  say  :  "  Few  of  the  university  pen  plays 
well  ;  they  smell  too  much  of  that  writer  Ovid 
and  that  writer  Metamorphosis,  and  talk  too 
much  of  Pro«;erpina  and  Jupiter.  Why,  here's 
our  fellow  Shakespeare  puts  them  all  down." 
"  Our  fellow  Shakespeare,"  that  is,  "  our  partner." 
The  late  Judge  Webb,  in  a  book  called  "  The 
Mystery  of  William  Shakespeare,"  asserted  that 
no  literary  man  of  the  day  could  be  "  adduced 
as  attesting  the  responsibility  of  the  player  for 
the  works  which  are  associated  with  his  name." 
Well,  here    is  such  a  statement.     If    I    may  say  a 

•  Return  jrotn  Parnassus  2,  V.  i.  1966. 


66  SHAKESPEARE 

final  word  about  that  remarkable  heresy :  the  two 
arguments  that  seem  to  me  conclusive  that  the 
Shakespearian  plays  were  not  written  by  a  gentle- 
man amateur  like  Francis  Bacon  are  (i)  that  the 
dramas  display,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  such 
wonderful  constructive  skill,  and  such  knowledge 
of  what  is  effective  on  the  stage — arts,  which  can 
only  be  learned  by  long  habituation  to  the  theatre 
— and  (2)  that  so  many  of  the  Shakespearian 
plays  are  old  plays  re -written,  e.g.  "  Henry  IV.," 
"Henry  V.,"  "King  John,"  "Richard  HI,"  "Mer- 
chant of  Venice,"  "  Hamlet  "  ;  and  to  re-write  an  old 
play  is  a  task  no  gentleman  would  have  undertaken 
for  his  own  pleasure,  or  indeed  would  have  been  at 
liberty  to  undertake,  because  the  plays  were  the 
absolute  property  of  the  acting  companies. 

Shakespeare's  growing  prosperity  is  marked  in 
1596  by  an  application  to  Heralds'  College  for 
a  grant  of  arms  to  his  father,  which,  though  un- 
successful at  the  time,  succeeded  three  years 
later;  and  in  1597  by  the  purchase  of  the  Great 
House  at  Stratford  called  "  New  Place."  But  his 
relish  of  these  signs  of  social  advancement  must 
have  been  sadly  dashed  by  the  loss  in  the  former 
year   of  his  only  son,  the  twelve-year-old  Hamnet. 

Can  we  at  all  figure  to  ourselves  Shakespeare's 
life  now  that  he  was  rising  into  fame? 

It  is  difficult  to  determine  how  much  of  the 
year  he  spent  in  Stratford  after  the  purchase  ot 
New  Place.     In    1597    he    appears    in  a  list   as  the 


SHAKESPEARE  67 

third  largest  owner  of  corn  in  his  ward,  which 
might  suggest  that  he  had  already  made  his  home 
there.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  curious 
memorandum  made  by  his  cousin,  Thomas  Greene, 
dated  September  9,  1609,  about  the  delay  in  re- 
pairing a  house  in  Stratford,  which  he  was  content 
to  permit  "  the  rather  because  I  perceyved  I  might 
stay  another  yere  at  New  Place,"  which  looks  as 
though  Shakespeare  could  not  have  been  in  con- 
stant residence.  Mr.  Halliwell-Phillipps  points  out 
also  that  the  precepts  in  an  action  brought  by 
Shakespeare  for  the  recovery  of  a  debt,  on 
August  17,  December  21,  1609,  and  February  15, 
March  15,  and  June  7,  1610,  were  issued  to 
Greene.  So  that  Shakespeare  was  apparently  away 
from  Stratford  on  those  dates,  which  cover  most 
of  the  year.  Biographers,  therefore,  have  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  it  was  not  until  161  r,  when 
he  ceased  writing  for  the  stage,  that  Shakespeare 
came  permanently  to  reside  at  Stratford.  Never- 
theless I  like  to  think  that  his  visits  there  were 
neither  short  nor  infrequent.  I  see  no  reason  to 
assume  that  when  Shakespeare  became  the  recog- 
nised playwright  of  his  company,  he  would  have 
been  expected  to  appear  on  the  boards  with  the 
regularity  of  those  members  who  were  actors 
only.  Indeed  it  is  inconceivable  that  he  should 
have  been  expected  to  produce  two   plays  a  year  ^ 

'  This  tradition  is  recorded  by  the  vicar  of  Stratford,  John  Ward,  in 
1662.      "  I  have   heard   that    Mr.    Shakespeare  .  .   .  frequented  the 

F  2 


68  SHAKESPEARE 

in  the  intervals  left  over  from  the  regular  practice 
of  an  exacting  profession.  It  may  be  remembered 
that  Hamlet  declared  that  his  adaptation  of  the 
play  which  touched  the  king's  conscience  ought 
to  get  him  a  share  in  a  theatrical  company.  And 
it  is  a  fair  inference  that  Shakespeare's  shares 
depended  upon  his  plays  rather  than  his  acting. 
As  to  his  residence  in  London,  we  must  bear  in 
mind  that  during  his  period  upon  the  stage  the 
theatre  was  the  height  of  fashion  ;  so  that,  besides 
making  his  fortune,  an  actor  and  dramatist  of 
recognised  genius  would  have  opportunities  of 
making  acquaintance  with  that  section  of  the 
fashionable  world  that  cared  for  art  and  letters. 
At  that  epoch  we  know  that  the  great  nobles 
were  even  eager  to  befriend  men  of  genius.  The 
familiar  tone  of  the  dedication  of  "  Lucrece "  to 
Lord  Southampton  has  often  been  remarked  upon. 
It  lends  likelihood  to  the  tradition,  handed  down 
by  Sir  William  Davenant,  that  Southampton  at 
one  time  gave  the  poet  a  large  sum  of  money 
"  to  enable  him  to  go  through  with  a  purchase 
which  he  heard  he  had  a  mind  to."  The  refer- 
ence to  Essex  in  one  of  the  choruses  of  "  Kins 
Henry  V.,"  which  is  dragged  in  by  the  head  and 
ears,    would    imply    that    that    nobleman,    no    less 


plays  all  his  younger  lime,  but  in  his  elder  days  lived  at  Stratford, 
and  supplied  the  stage  with  two  plays  every  year."  If  the  "every 
year  "  is  to  he  pressed  we  must  suppose  that  some  manuscripts  perished 
in  the  fire  at  the  Globe  Theatre  in  1613. 


SHAKESPEARE  69 

than  his  friend  Southampton,  had  admitted  the 
poet  to  his  friendship  ;  and  the  obvious  meaning 
of  the  "  Sonnets "  is  that  an  affectionate  intimacy 
had  grown  up  between  Shakespeare  and  some 
scion  of  a  noble  house  whose  identity  cannot 
now  be  determined.'  And  then  besides  these  great 
people,  great  in  one  sense,  we  know  Shakespeare 
to  have  been  intimate  with  those  who  were  great 
in  another  sense — the  men  of  letters  of  the  day. 
Fuller,  in  his  "  Worthies,"  has  recorded  a  tradition 
of  the  wit  combats  at  the  Mermaid  tavern  between 
Shakespeare  and  Ben  Jonson,  comparing  the  latter 
to  a  "Spanish  great  galleon,"  solid  but  slow;  the 
former  to  an  English  man-of-war,  "  lesser  in  bulk, 
but  lighter  in  sailing."  Michael  Drayton,  a  War- 
wickshire man,  is  said  to  have  been  one  of  his 
familiars  up  to  the  last.  But  though  tradition  links 
no  other  literary  names  than  these  with  Shake- 
speare's, there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Mermaid 
meetings,  which  owed  their  beginnings  to  Sir  Walter 
Ralegh,  included  all  that  was  distinguished  at  the 
time  in  poetry  and  the  drama. 

But  while  the  courtiers  were  affable  in  the  way 
that  great  people  always  are  affable  to  the  men  of 
genius  who  amuse  them,  and  while  Bohemia  was 
friendly,  all  that  was  respectable  and  religious  in 
the  City  of  London  was  bitterly  hostile.  All 
through     Elizabeth's    reign    a    battle     was    waged 

'  I  have  written  at  length  on  this  subject  in  vol.  x.   of  the  Stratford 
Head  Shakespeare  and  in  my  edition  of  the  Sonnets  (Ginn). 


70  SHAKESPEARE 

between  the  Court  and  the  City  as  to  the  toleration 
of  theatres  and  players  at  all.     If  anyone  supposes 
that    an   actor's    profession    in    Shakespeare's    day 
was   respected   because  it  was   profitable,  he  should 
read  '    the    petition    of    a   gentleman    called    Henry 
Clifton  to  the    Queen    against    the    Master    of  the 
Children    of  her    Chapel    for    kidnapping    his    son 
Thomas,    a   boy    of  thirteen.       The    choirs    of    the 
Chapels    Royal    were   recruited     in    those    days,    as 
the    navy    long   continued    to    be,   by    impressment. 
Any  boys    with    good    voices  from  any  other  choir 
were    liable    to    be   pressed    into    the    service.     But 
when    the    stage    became    popular   and    the    various 
choirs  at  St.  Paul's,  Westminster,  and   the  Chapels 
Royal  added  acting  to  their   ecclesiastical    employ- 
ment, then,  it  seems,  boys    were    impressed  for  the 
stage    who    had    no    singing    voices.      This    little 
Tom  Clifton    was  seized  upon  one  morning  on    his 
way    to  Christ's    Hospital,   and  taken   to  the    play- 
house   at    Blackfriars,   there,    in    his    father's   words, 
"to    compell    him    to    exercise  the  base   trade   of  a 
mercenary    interlude    player,    to    his   utter    loss    of 
time,    ruin,   and    disparagement."      The   words    base 
and  vile  occur  again    and  again  in    this  interesting 
document,    as    epithets    of    the    actor's    profession  ; 
and,  coming  from  a    gentleman,  they  form  an    apt 
commentary  on  certain  passages   in  the  "  Sonnets," 
in    which    Shakespeare   contrasts    his    fortune   with 
that  of  his  young  and  gentle  friend  : 

'  Fleay,  History  of  the  Stage ,  ii.  127. 


SHAKESPEARE  71 

"  O,  for  my  sake  do  you  with  Fortune  chide,  / 

The  guilty  goddess  of  my  harmful  deeds, 
That  did  not  better  for  my  life  provide 
Than  public  means  which  public  manners  breeds. 
Thence  comes  it  that  my  name  receives  a  brand, 
And  almost  thence  my  nature  is  subdued 
To  what  it  works  in,  like  the  dyer's  hand  : 
Pity  me,  then,  and  wish  I  were  renew'd.'' 

The  bravest  of  men  might  be  forgiven  for  wincing 
now  and  then  when  he  caught  sight  of  his  own 
trade  through  the  eyes  of  the  public  opinion  of 
the  day.  Whether  his  fellow-townsmen  at  Strat- 
ford were  as  contemptuous  there  is  no  evidence. 
It  is  the  fashion  to  say  so,  but  I  hesitate  to  believe 
it.  The  player  had  made  money  at  any  rate,  and 
that  the  Stratford  people  were  always  short  of. 
But  it  may  be  guessed  that  they  were  proud  of 
him,  too ;  and  his  father  had  been  somebody 
among  them.  Of  course  the  rising  tide  of 
Puritanism  visited  Stratford  as  other  places.  The 
vicar  there  was  a  noted  Puritan,  and  so  was 
Dr.  Hall,  Shakespeare's  son-in-law.  The  town 
council  in  1602,  and  again  in  161 2,  prohibited 
players  from  acting  in  the  borough,  and  in  16 16 
gave  the  King's  own  company  a  gratuity  for 
going  away  quietly.  But  I  am  far  from  being 
convinced  that  the  dramatist  himself  would  resent 
this  action  of  the  council.  He  knew  better  than 
they  did  the  scandals  that  haunted  the  player's 
profession,  and  in  the  "  Sonnets "  he  speaks  of 
them  with  intense  feeling.     Of  course,  he  was   not 


72  SHAKESPEARE 

a  Puritan,  but  he  would  sympathise  with  the  better 
side  of  Puritanism,  as  he  saw  it  in  his  own  daughter 
and  her  husband  ;  and  when  we  find  from  the 
Chamberlain's  accounts  of  Stratford  that  a  preacher 
in  1614  was  entertained  at  New  Place  "with  a 
quart  of  sack  and  a  quart  of  claret  wine,"  it  is 
gratuitous  to  assume  with  Dr.  Brandes  that  Shake- 
speare must  have  been  away  in  London  at  the  time. 

As  to  the  details  of  Shakespeare's  life  at  Strat- 
ford we  have  very  few  facts,  but  much  has  been 
made  of  them.  In  the  attempt  to  throw  light 
upon  Shakespeare's  character  much  has  been  made 
of  his  suing  his  neighbours  for  small  sums.  But 
such  litigation,  to  judge  by  the  records,  seems  to 
have  been  the  normal  method  of  carrying  on 
business  at  Stratford  ;  and,  at  any  rate,  as  these 
suits  were  made  in  the  way  of  business  by  Shake- 
speare's attorney  on  the  spot,  they  cannot  be  held 
to  shed  much  light  on  his  personal  character.  Much, 
too,  has  been  made  of  his  action  in  regard  to  the 
proposed  enclosure  of  the  open  fields  at  VVelcombe 
by  William  Combe  ;  but  on  this  point  the  two  most 
recent  biographers  take  precisely  opposite  views. 
Mr.  Sidney  Lee  says  :  "  Having  secured  hini.sclf  against 
all  possible  loss,  Shakespeare  threw  his  influence  into 
Combe's  scale  ; "  on  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Brandes 
asserts  that  Shakespeare  "  defended  the  rights  of  his 
fellow-citizens  against  the  country  gentry."  The 
evidence,  happily,  can  be  put  very  shortly,  and  every- 
one can  form    his    own    opinion    upon  it.     The   old 


SHAKESPEARE  73 

system  of  agriculture  being  one  of  common  fields  in 
which  strips  were  held  by  various  owners  side  by 
side,  it  was  necessary,  in  order  to  enclose,  that  one 
proprietor  should  buy  out  the  rest.  William  Combe, 
the  squire  of  Welcombe,  had  for  neighbour  a  Mr. 
Mannering,  steward  to  Lord  Chancellor  Ellesmere, 
who  was  lord  of  the  manor  ;  and  as,  according  to 
Mr.  Elton,  the  Chancellor  had  that  year  decreed 
that  enclosure  was  for  the  common  advantage,  Combe 
had  a  strong  case  and  strong  backing.  The  corpora- 
tion of  Stratford  resisted  the  proposal.  The  question 
for  us  is,  which  side  did  Shakespeare  take  ?  All  our 
evidence  is  derived  from  a  MS.  book  belonging  to 
Shakespeare's  cousin,  Thomas  Greene,  who  was  clerk 
to  the  corporation.  The  following  are  the  pertinent 
passages,  in  modern  spelling  : 

"17  Nov. — My  cousin  Shakespeare  coming  yesterday  to 
town,  I  went  to  see  him  how  he  did.  He  told  me  that 
they  assured  him  they  meant  to  enclose  no  further  than  to 
Gospel  Bush.  .  .  .  and  that  they  mean  in  April  to  survey 
the  land,  and  then  to  give  satisfaction,  and  not  before  ; 
and  he  and  Mr.  Hall  say  they  think  there  will  be  nothing 
done  at  all. 

"  23  Dec. — A  hall  \i.e.  council  meeting].  Letters  written, 
one  to  Mr.  Manering,  another  to  Mr.  Shakespeare,  with 
almost  all  the  Company's  hands  to  either.  I  also  writ  of 
myself  to  my  cousin  Shakespeare  the  copies  of  all  our  acts, 
and  then  also  a  note  of  the  inconveniences  would  happen 
by  the  enclosure. 

"  gjan. — Mr.  Replyngham's  [/.e.  Combe's  agent]  28  Oct., 
article  with  Mr.  Shakespeare  [i.e.  deed  of  indemnity  against 
loss],  and  then  I  was  put  in  by  T.  Lucas. 


74  SHAKESPEARE 

'^^  w  Jan.  1614. — Mr.  Manering  and  his  agreement  for 
me  with  my  cousin  Shakespeare. 

"  Sept. — VV.  Shakespeare  telling  J.  Greene  that  I  was  not 
able  to  bear  the  enclosing  of  Welconibe." 

Now  what  these  entries  tell  us  is  (i)  that  Shake- 
speare did  not  think  Combe  meant  to  press  the 
matter,  in  face  of  the  opposition  of  the  Stratford 
people ;  (2)  that  in  case  Combe  should  do  so, 
he  secured  himself  from  loss  through  the  depre- 
ciation of  the  tithes,  of  which  he  had  purchased 
the  moiety  of  a  lease  ten  years  previously  ;  (3)  tha^ 
he  secured  his  cousin  also,  who  had  a  share  in  the 
tithes.  But  so  far  there  is  absolutely  no  ground 
for  saying  either  that  he  "  threw  his  influence  into 
Combe's  scale,"  or  "  defended  the  rights  of  his  fellow- 
citizens."  The  view  we  shall  take  of  his  general 
attitude  will  turn  upon  our  interpretation  of  the  last 
entry  quoted  above.  As  it  stands  it  looks  a  little 
pointless.  Why  should  Shakespeare  tell  Thomas 
Greene's  own  brother  a  fact  he  must  have  known 
better  than  Shakespeare  did,  and  why  should  Thomas 
Greene  make  a  solemn  entry  of  Shakespeare's  testi- 
mony ?  Here  Dr.  Ingleby,  who  facsimiled  the  MS., 
comes  to  our  help.  He  points  out  that  Greene  had 
a  trick  of  writing  "  I  "  for  "  he,"  sometimes  correcting 
the  slip,  and  sometimes  not.  On  a  previous  page  he 
had  written,  "  I  willed  him  to  learn  what  /  could, 
and  I  told  him  so  would  I,"  where  the  second  /is  an 
obvious  slip  for  he.  There  can  be  no  reasonable 
doubt,  then,  that  this   cryptic   entry  informs   us   of 


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SHAKESPEARE  75 

Shakespeare's  own  dislike  to  the  enclosure,  and  dis- 
poses of  the  statement  that  he  threw  his  weight  into 
Combe's  scale,  though  it  does  not  justify  us  in  saying 
that  "  he  defended  the  rights  of  his  fellow-citizens." 
He  may  have  done  so,  but  it  is  dangerous  to  go 
beyond  the  evidence. 

The  words  quoted  by  Thomas  Greene  are  the  last 
recorded  words  of  the  poet.  In  the  April  of  the  year 
following  he  died  of  a  fever  in  his  house  at  Stratford, 
after  signing  a  very  elaborate  will  disposing  of  all 
his  property.  There  is  an  interesting  clause  leaving 
memorial  rings  to  four  friends  in  Stratford,  and  three 
members  of  his  old  company,  Burbage,  Hemings, 
and  Cundell ;  the  last  two  of  whom,  seven  years 
later,  collected  and  published  his  plays.  But  the 
clause  which  has  aroused  most  comment  is  an  inter- 
lineation, the  only  reference  to  his  wife  in  the 
document : — 

"  Item.  I  give  unto  my  wife  my  second  best  bed  with 
the  furniture." 

Unkind  people  have  thought  that  Shakespeare 
meant  to  be  unkind  ;  but  Mr.  Halliwell-Phillipps 
collected  instances  of  many  similar  bequests  from 
contemporary  wills,  one  to  a  wife  of  "  the  second 
best  feather  bed  with  a  whole  furniture  there  be- 
longing," so  that  no  more  ought  to  be  heard  of  any 
suggested  insult.  The  reason  why  Shakespeare 
chose  to  make  his  daughter  legatee,  rather  than  his 
wife,  was  probably  the  very  simple  one  that  his  wife 
was   seven   years   his   senior,  and   perhaps   in   poor 


76  SHAKESPEARE 

health  ;  and  the  reason  why  he  interHned  this  special 
gift  is  probably  because  she  asked  for  it  specially. 

In  conclusion,  I  would  ask,  can  we  get  any  clear 
light  on  Shakespeare's  character  from  the  facts  that 
have  been  ascertained  as  to  his  career  ?  We  have 
not  many  formal  expressions  of  opinion  by  con- 
temporaries about  the  man  himself  apart  from  his 
works,  but  we  have  one  or  two,  and  they  lay  stress 
on  two  characteristics,  his  friendliness  and  his  sense 
of  honour.  The  very  first  character  we  have  of  him 
by  a  contemporary  speaks  of  his  "  uprightness  of 
dealing,  which  argues  his  honesty,"  and  also  of  his 
"  civil  demeanour "  ;  and  the  very  last,  that  of  Ben 
Jonson,  says  the  same  :  "  He  was  indeed  honest  and 
of  an  open  and  free  nature  '  ;  and  again  in  the  lines 
on  his  portrait :  "  It  was  for  ge?itle  Shakespeare  cut." 
With  this  agrees  the  character  that  is  set  down  in 
two  epigrams  by  John  Davies  of  Hereford.  In  1603, 
in  an  epigram  on  players,  he  made  his  compliments 
especially  to  Shakespeare  and  Burbage,  as  being 
gentlevten  in  character.     It  is  worth  quoting  : 

"  Players,  I  love  ye  and  your  quality, 
As  ye  are  men — that  pastime  not  abused  ; — 
W.  S.,  R.  B.  And  some  I  love  for  painting,  poesy  ; ' 
And  say  fell  Fortune  cannot  be  excused 
That  hath  for  belter  uses  you  refused. 
Wit,  courage,  good  shape,  good  parts,  and  all  good 
(As  long  as  all  these  goods  are  no  worse  used)  ; 
And  though  the  stage  doth  stain  pure  gentle  blood, 
Yet  generous  ye  are  in  mind  and  mood." 

'  Burbage  is  the  painter,  Shakespeare  the  poet :  thus  the  epigram 
identifies  the  poet  and  player. 


SHAKESPEARE  7/ 

And  on  the  word  generous  in  the  last  line  he  makes 
the  note  :  "  Roscius  was  said  for  his  excellency  in 
his  quality  to  be  only  worthy  to  come  on  the  stage, 
and  for  his  honesty  to  be  more  worthy  than  to  come 
thereon."  To  complete  the  portrait  we  may  add  the 
traits  that  Aubrey  had  from  Beeston  the  actor  :  "  He 
was  a  handsome,  well-shapt  man,  very  good  company, 
and  of  a  very  ready  and  pleasant  wit." 

Honour,  then,  in  public  life,  gentleness  and  com- 
panionableness  in  his  private  relations — these  are  the 
characteristics  which  men  noted  in  Shakespeare,  and 
they  are  confirmed  by  the  facts  of  his  career.  His 
"honesty,"  to  use  that  word  in  its  broad  Elizabethan 
sense,  is  brought  out  by  two  facts  which  distinguish 
Shakespeare  from  many  of  the  contemporary  drama- 
tists. The  first  is  that,  much  as  commentators  have 
laboured  to  find  caricatures  of  his  fellow-playwrights 
among  his  drajuatis  persoficB,  they  have  altogether 
failed  ;  and  while  other  dramatists  seem  to  have 
made  these  attacks  a  prominent  feature  of  interest  in 
their  plays,  the  only  reference  made  by  Shakespeare 
to  any  quarrel  is  the  admirably  just  criticism  of 
Hamlet  on  the  competition  between  the  men  and  boy 
actors,  that  those  who  encourage  it  are  making  the 
boys  fight  "  against  their  own  succession."  The 
second  fact  is  that  Shakespeare  chose  the  life  of  hard 
work  and  thrift  instead  of  the  life  of  dissipation, 
keeping  as  a  lodestar  before  him  the  determination 
to  restore  the  fortunes  of  his  father  and  his  family. 
For  this   he   has   been    sneered    at   by  Pope,  of  all 


78  SHAKESPEARE 

people,  who,  in  a  familiar  couplet,  accuses  him  of 
winging  his  flight  "  for  gain."  It  would  be  as  fair  to 
say  that  Warren  Hastings  established  our  Indian 
Empire  "for  gain,"  because  he  also  kept  always  before 
hirn  the  resolution  to  win  back  the  family  estate. 
I  do  not  understand  how  any  accusation  can  be 
brought  against  any  man  of  genius  for  taking  the 
money  value  of  his  work,  unless  it  can  be  shown  that, 
while  careful  of  his  own  interests,  he  is  indifferent 
to  those  of  others.  Of  this  there  is  no  evidence  in 
Shakespeare's  case  ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  Ben  Jonson, 
who  knew  him  well,  and  had  a  shrewd  tongue,  assures 
us  that  he  was  of  "  an  open  and  free  nature."  I 
submit  therefore  that  the  facts  of  Shakespeare's  life 
show  him  to  us  as  a  good  friend  and  a  man  of 
honour. 

Additional  Note. 

Mr.  Greenwood  {The  Shakespeare  Problem  Restated,  p.  318)  has 
ch.irged  the  biographers  of  Shakespeare  with  dishonesty  for  their 
interpretation  of  the  famlHar  passage  of  Kind-hart^s  Dream,  in  which 
Chettle  apologises  for  the  rudeness  of  Greene  in  his  Groalsxvorth  of 
Wit.  Mr.  Henry  Davey,  the  latest  biographer,  is  said  to  be  "  more 
honest  than  most " ;  so  that  we  may  hope  the  tide  of  immorahty  is 
turning.  Still,  when  we  find  "  Malone,  Steevens,  Dycc,  Collier, 
Halliwell,  Knight,"  and  in  this  last  generation,  "  Mr.  Sidney  Lee, 
Messrs.  (Jarnett  and  Gosse,  Mr.  Churton  Collins,  Mr.  W.  L.  Courtney, 
and  Mons.  Jusscrand  "  all  agreeing  that  Chettle  in  this  passage  refers 
to  Shakespeare,  and  only  Mr.  Fkay  and  Mr.  E.  K.  Castle,  K.C., 
denying  it,  it  seems  somewhat  lacking  in  humour  to  assert  that  all 
tho.se  critics  who  on  so  many  points  difler  profoundly  from  each 
other  Steevens  fri»m  Malone,  Dyce  from  Collier,  to  go  no  further — 
have,  in  this  matter  of  Chettle,  no  honest  grounds  for  their  opinion, 
but  have  caught  "the  pestilent  perversion,"  as  Mr.  Greenwood 
phrases  it,  from  each  other.  I  am  not  at  all  surprised  that  Mr. 
Greenwood  takes  the  view  he  does  of  Chellle's  reference,  because  I 


SHAKESPEARE  79 

once  took  the  same  view  myself  for  five  minutes.  It  is  the  obvious 
view  for  everyone  to  take  when  he  first  reads  the  document.  But  a 
second  reading  proves  it  to  be  untenable,  as  I  hope  to  show.  Mr. 
Fleay's  interpretation  of  the  passage  is  so  obviously  hasty  and  super- 
ficial that  even  Mr.  Greenwood  has  to  throw  him  over  when  he  passes 
from  saying  who  is  not  referred  to,  to  saying  who  is  (p.  315). 

The  passage  in  dispute  runs  as  follows  : 

"About  three  months  since,  died  Mr.  Robert  Greene,  leaving  many 
papers  in  sundry  booksellers'  hands,  among  others  his  Groats-worth 
of  Wit,  in  which  a  letter  written  to  divers  play-makers,  is  offensively 
by  one  or  two  of  them  taken ;  and  because  on  the  dead  they  cannot 
be  avenged,  they  wilfully  forge  in  their  conceits  a  living  author,  and 
after  tossing  it  to  and  fro,  no  remedy  but  it  must  light  on  me.  How 
I  have  all  the  time  of  my  conversing  in  printing  hindred  the  bitter 
inveighing  against  scholars,  it  hath  been  very  well  known ;  and  how 
in  that  I  dealt  I  can  sufficiently  prove.  With  neither  of  them  that 
take  offence  was  I  acquainted,  and  with  one  of  them  I  care  not  if  I 
never  be.  The  other  whom,  at  that  time,  I  did  not  so  much  spare 
as  since  I  wish  I  had,  for  that,  as  I  have  moderated  the  heat  of  living 
writers,  and  might  have  used  mine  own  discretion  — especially  in  such 
a  case,  the  author  being  dead  — that  I  did  not  I  am  as  sorry  as  if 
the  original  fault  had  been  my  fault,  because  myself  have  seen  his 
demeanour  no  less  civil  than  he  excellent  in  the  quality  he  professes  ; 
besides  divers  of  zvorship  have  reported  his  uprightness  of  dealing 
which  argues  his  honesty,  and  his  facetious  grcue  in  writing  that 
approves  his  art.  For  the  first  whose  learning  I  reverence,  and  at 
the  perusing  of  Greene's  book,  struck  out  what  then  in  conscience 
I  thought  he  in  some  displeasure  writ  ;  or,  had  it  been  true,  yet  to 
publish  it  was  intolerable ;  and  him  I  would  wish  to  use  me  no  worse 
than  I  deserve." 

The  three  friends  to  whom  Greene  addressed  his  epistle  were 
Marlowe  and  two  others,  usually  supposed  to  be  Nash  and  Peele,  or 
Lodge  and  Peele.  Marlowe  is  "the  first"  of  the  play-makers;  it 
is  his  acquaintance  that  Chettle  does  not  wish  to  make,  though  he 
reverences  his  learning  ;  and  he  admits  that  he  had  softened  the 
passage  addressed  to  him  before  he  printed  it.  On  this  identification 
all  the  Shakespearian  critics  are  agreed  (with  the  single  exception 
of  Mr.  Fleay),  and  Mr.  Greenwood  assents.  The  problem  is,  Wlio 
was  the  other  play-maker  who  complained,  and  to  whom  Chettle 
apologises,  wishing  he  had  excised  the  offensive  matter  ?  The  passages 
following  the  address  to  Marlowe  (which  need  not  be  transcribed)  are 
as  follows : 

"  With  thee  I  join  young  Juvenal,  that  biting  satirist,  that  lastly 


So  SHAKESPEARE 

with  me  together  writ  a  comedy.  Sweet  boy,  mii;ht  I  advise  thee, 
be  advised,  and  get  not  many  enemies  with  Vjitter  words  ;  inveigh 
against  vain  men,  for  thou  canst  do  it,  no  man  better,  no  man  so 
well ;  thou  hast  a  liberty  to  reprove  all,  and  name  none  ;  for  one 
being  spoken  to,  all  are  offended  ;  none  being  blamed,  no  man  is 
injured.  Stop  shallow  water  still  running,  it  will  rage  ;  tread  on  a 
worm,  and  it  will  turn ;  then  blame  not  scholars  vexed  with  sharp 
lines,  if  they  reprove  thy  too  much  liberty  of  reproof." 

Clearly  there  is  nothing  here  to  hurt  the  most  susceptible  man 
of  letters,  and  nothing  to  account  for  Chettle's  regret  that  he  had 
not  edited  with  more  vigour.  Then  follows  the  last  of  the  three 
addresses  : 

"And  thou,  no  less  deserving  than  the  other  two,  in  some  things 
rarer,  in  nothing  inferior ;  driven  (as  myself)  to  extreme  shifts ;  a 
little  have  I  to  say  to  thee  ;  and  were  it  not  an  idolatrous  oath,  I 
would  swear  by  sweet  St.  George  [Peek's  name  was  George]  thou 
art  unworthy  better  hap,  sith  thou  dependest  on  so  mean  a  stay." 

And  then  follows  a  general  passage,  addressed  to  all  three  — the 
attack  ou  the  actors  (quoted  on  p.  63).  Now  it  is  idle  to  pretend 
that  a  piece  of  brotherly  advice  to  avoid  relying  on  the  players  for  a 
livelihood  could  have  been  "  ottensively  taken  "  by  any  play-maker. 
Greene's  tone  could  not  be  kinder.  It  follows  that  we  must  look 
elsewhere  for  the  offended  person  ;  and  we  can  only  find  him,  where 
critics  from  the  first  have  found  him,  in  the  player-play-maker 
abused  as  "  Shake-scene."  We  must  admit  that  Chetile  should  have 
distinguished  more  clearly  the  play  makers  Greene  was  writing  to^ 
from  the  play-maker  he  was  writing  about ;  but  because  he  wrote 
muddled  prose  in  the  illogical  Tudor  way,  we  need  not  deprive  what 
he  wrote  of  all  meaning.  Further,  this  identification  fits  the  actual 
expressions  used. 

(I)  Chettle  distinguishes  "the  facetious  grace"  of  his  offended  play- 
maker's  writing,  his  "art,"  from  some  "  quality  he  professes."  Now 
in  those  days  there  was  no  "quality"  or  profession  of  authorship. 
The  scholar  was  a  "  gentleman " ;  his  university  degree  was  his 
patent.  And  so  Greene  addresses  his  letter  "to  those  f;entlemen, 
his  quondam  acquaintance,  that  spend  their  wits  in  making  plays," 
and  contrasts  them  with  the  players,  "apes"  and  "buckram  gentle- 
men," who  soothe  their  betters  "with  terms  of  Mastership,"  while 
they  prey  upon  them.  The  ofl'ended  play-maker,  then,  has  a 
"quality"  as  well  as  his  art;  and  this  fits  the  identification  with 
Shakespeare;  the  actor's  "quality"  being  a  term  in  common  use. 
"Will  they  pursue  the  ijiiality  no  hmger  than  they  can  sing?"  asks 
Hamlet  about  the  boy  players  (H.  ii.  363). 


SHAKESPEARE  8 1 

(2)  Moreover,  Chettle's  apology  exactly  fits  Greene's  attack.  Greene 
had  accused  "Shake-scene"  of  thinking  he  could  "bombast  out  a 
blank  verse";  to  which  Chettle  replies  that  "divers  of  worship  had 
reported  his  facetious  grace  in  writing."  He  had  called  him,  "  in  his 
own  conceit,  the  only  Shake-scene  in  a  country,"  which,  whatever 
it  exactly  means,  was  not  intended  for  a  compliment  on  his  acting. 
Chettle  replies  that  he  had  seen  him  "excellent  in  the  quality  he 
professes."  Finally  (though  perhaps  I  am  taking  here  an  unreal 
distinction),  Greene  had  accused  him  of  arraying  himself  in  borrowed 
plumage  ;  not  only  as  an  actor,  who  is  necessarily  "  a  puppet  speaking 
from  our  mouths,"  an  antick  "garnished  in  our  colours";  but 
as  a  playwright,  "an  upstart  crow,  beautified  with  our  feathers" 
to  which  he  has  no  right.  To  this  Chettle  replies,  "divers  of 
worship  have  reported  his  uprightness  of  dealing,  which  argues  his 
honesty."  There  could  be  no  point  in  quoting  these  testimonials  from 
men  of  worship  unless  corresponding  charges  had  been  made  ;  and  it 
is  against  "  Shake-scene,"  that  is  Shakespeare,  they  were  made,  and 
not  against  Nash,  Lodge,  or  Peele. 


G 


82  SHAKESPEARE 


III. 

THE  CHARACTER  OF  THE  DRAMATIST 

The  problem  to  which  we  are  now  to  address  our- 
selves is  the  question  whether  it  is  possible  from 
an  examination  of  Shakespeare's  writings  to  arrive 
at  any  conclusion  as  to  his  personal  character  and 
view  of  life.  Let  us  begin  at  the  bottom  with 
some  questions  as  to  his  personal  tastes  and  habits. 
And  first,  as  to  drinking.  Readers  have  been  struck 
with  one  or  two  passages — one  in  "  Hamlet,"  '  one 
in  "  Othello,"  ^  and  one  in  "  As  You  Like  It "  3— 
censuring  the  English  habit  of  drinking  to  excess  ; 
passages  which  have  no  relevancy  to  the  plot  of 
the  play,  and  seem  spoken  over  the  footlights 
directly  to  the  audience. 

"  This  heavy-headed  revel,  east  and  west, 
Makes  us  traduced  and  taxed  of  other  nations." 

Now  the  interest  of  these  passages  is  considerable 
taken  by  themselves,  but  they  become  more  interest- 
ing still  in  the  light  of  certain  local  traditions  that 
Shakespeare's  convivial  habits  occasionally  led  him 
into    intemperance.     So    that    what    on   the    surface 

'  i.  4,  17-  '  "•  3.  78.  *  ii.  3.  48. 


SHAKESPEARE  83 

looks  merely  like  the  voice  of  Shakespeare's  con- 
tempt for  a  silly  custom  may  be  interpreted,  and 
by  some  critics  is  interpreted,  as  the  voice  of  the 
dramatist's  self-accusation.     Which  is  it  ? 

Let  me  say,  unhesitatingly,  that  I  have  no  faith 
in  the  traditions.  One  is  connected  with  a  local 
crab-tree ;  we  know  how  a  tradition  of  that  sort 
never  dies ;  it  passes  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion not  only  of  men  but  of  trees,  and  is  attached 
in  each  age  to  the  most  prominent  memory,  being 
probably  in  origin  as  old  as  Thor.  The  other  tradi- 
tion is  recorded  by  a  vicar  of  Stratford  under  the 
Commonwealth,  and  is  to  the  effect  that  Shakespeare 
died  of  a  fever  caught  of  drinking  too  much  wine  at 
a  merrymaking  with  Ben  Jonson  and  Drayton.^ 
But  doctors  tell  us  to-day  that  a  fever  is  more  easily 
contracted  from  bad  water  than  from  good  wine  ; 
and  Stratford  was  notoriously  insanitary. 

This  question  of  Shakespeare's  intemperate  habits 
seems  to  me  a  point  on  which  the  evidence  of  his 
whole  successful  life  may  claim  to  be  taken  into 
account.  No  one  can  say  that  his  work  has  suffered 
from  any  cheap  vice  of  this  sort ;  and  I  prefer 
therefore  to  hear  in  the  passages  I  have  referred  to, 
the  warnings  of  a  man  of  common  sense  trying  to 
stem  the  tide  of  a  foolish  fashion.  That  exclama- 
tion of  Portia's : 
"  I  will  do  anything,  Nerissa,  ere  I  be  married  to  a  sponge,"  - 

'  Shakespeare  died  April  23rd   1616  ;  having  made  the  first  draft 
of  his  will  in  January,  the  second  in  March. 

G  2 


84  SHAKESPEARE 

has  to  my  ear  a  ring  of  real  disgust ;  and  all  the 
criticisms  in  that  scene  we  may  well  take  to  be 
roughly  Shakespeare's  own. 

More  interesting,  perhaps,  and  less  easy  of  solu- 
tion, is  another  question  of  personal  habit.  "  Did 
Shakespeare  smoke?"  or,  as  the  phrase  then  was, 
"  Did  he  drink  tobacco?" 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Shakespeare  is  one 
of  the  very  few  Elizabethan  dramatists  who  have 
no  reference  to  that  wonderful  narcotic  which  came 
into  England  almost  at  the  same  moment  as  his  own 
great  genius.  The  meaning  of  this  silence  of  his 
might  be  argued  without  end.  On  the  one  side, 
smokers  might  ask  how  Shakespeare  could  possibly 
introduce  tobacco-smoking  into  romantic  or  classical 
drama,  the  scene  of  which  was  laid  in  mediaeval  Italy 
or  ancient  Rome ;  or,  again,  into  the  Falstaff 
comedies  of  Plantagenet  days.  Or  they  might  urge 
that  if  the  poet  disliked  tobacco,  it  would  have  been 
as  possible  to  let  the  doctor  in  "  Macbeth  "  compli- 
ment King  James  on  his  recent  "Counterblast"  to 
the  pernicious  drug,  as  to  let  him  compliment  his 
Majesty  on  touching  for  the  King's  evil.  On  the 
other  side  the  anti-tobacconists  might  point  out 
that  Shakespeare  had  a  good  chance  to  introduce 
smoking  as  a  gentlemanlike  accomplisiiment  in  the 
Induction  to  "  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew,"  where 
some  fun  might  have  been  made  of  Christopher  Sly's 
attempt  to  play  the  gentleman  in  that  particular  ; 
but  he   abstains,  and    they  might    add    that  Shake- 


SHAKESPEARE  8$ 

speare  was  probably  so  sickened  of  tobacco  smoke 
by  the  custom  of  smoking  on  the  stage,  that  he  was 
little  likely  to  practise  it  on  his  own  account.  The 
question  cannot  be  determined. 

On  a  higher  plane  we  may  ask,  had  Shakespeare 
a  taste  for  music  ?  One  of  the  few  points  on  which 
all  the  biographers  are  agreed  is  that  the  dramatist 
was  a  passionate  lover  of  this  art  ;  and  they  may  be 
right.  In  an  age  when  music  formed  part  of  a 
liberal  education,  it  is  not  improbable  that  he  shared 
in  the  general  appreciation  ;  though  his  technical 
knowledge  is  occasionally  at  fault.  But  if  we  look 
at  the  references  to  music  in  the  plays,  we  find  that 
they  are  so  much  the  outcome  of  the  temperament 
of  the  dramatis  personce,  or  of  the  needs  of  the 
dramatic  situation,  that  they  must  be  used  with 
caution  as  evidence  of  the  dramatist's  own  taste. 
The  famous  speech  with  which  "  Twelfth  Night " 
opens  is  in  character  with  the  love-sick,  sentimental 
Duke ;  the  no  less  famous  speech  of  Lorenzo  in  the 
last  act  of  "  The  Merchant  of  Venice  "  suits  his  high- 
pitched  romantic  nature,  and  is  moreover  in  harmony 
with  a  scene 

"  Where  music  and  moonlight  and  feeling 
Are  one." 

The  piece  of  evidence  that  would  incline  us  to 
give  Shakespeare  the  benefit  of  any  doubt  is  the 
8th  Sonnet,  and  again  the  128th,  addressed  to  a 
lady  playing  on  the  virginals. 


86  SHAKESPEARE 

From  art  let  us  go  to  politics.  Here  we  can  have 
little  doubt  as  to  Shakespeare's  general  view.  An 
Elizabethan  of  genius  who  had  gone  through  the 
stress  of  the  Armada  year  when  he  was  twenty-four 
years  old  could  not  but  have  felt  the  new  thrill  of 
national  life  and  the  new  sense  of  England's  great- 
ness, and  again  and  again  in  his  plays  Shakespeare 
says  a  great  word  that  has  still  power  to  stir  our 
blood  : 

"  O  England,  model  to  thy  inward  greatness, 
Like  little  body  with  a  mighty  heart  ! " 

or, 

"  This  England  never  did  nor  never  shall 
Lie  at  the  proud  foot  of  a  conqueror 
But  when  it  first  did  help  to  wound  itself," 

or,  best  of  all,  John  of  Gaunt's  touching  lament  in 
"Richard  II."  But  Shakespeare  has  been  accused 
of  supporting  the  Stuart  ideas  of  monarchy,  es- 
pecially by  his  references  to  the  sanctity  of  kingship. 
An  actor  attached  to  the  Lord  Chamberlain's  com- 
pany, which  with  James's  accession  became  the 
King's,  was  courtier  enough  to  introduce  a  respectful 
compliment  now  and  again  to  his  prince  ;  but  those 
who  charge  Shakespeare  with  abetting  the  Stuart 
notions  of  divine  right  must  surely  forget  the  lessons 
on  the  nature  of  true  kingship  which  are  embalmed 
in  the  trilogy  of  "Richard  II.,"  "Henry  IV.,"  and 
*'  Henry  V."  Again  it  is  objected  against  Shake- 
speare that  he  disliked  crowds.  But  who  likes 
them  ?     Mankind    does   not   show    well    in    crowds. 


SHAKESPEARE  8/ 

even  at  political  meetings  in  the  twentieth  century. 
And  Shakespeare  lived  before  the  persons  and 
manners  of  the  commonalty  had  been  polished  by 
school-boards.  Certainly  Shakespeare  made  his 
crowds  foolish  enough,  always  at  the  mercy  of 
demagogues  ;  and  he  made  them  cruel  enough ; 
but  take  his  mechanicals,  not  in  crowds,  but  singly, 
and  he  is  far  from  denying  them  human  virtues. 
The  Citizens  in  "  Coriolanus  "  have  much  the  best 
of  the  argument  with  Menenius  Agrippa,  when  he 
is  expounding  the  fable  of  the  belly  and  its 
members  ;  they  have  much  the  best  of  the  argument 
with  Coriolanus  himself  when  he  is  suing  for  the 
consulship.  And  can  one  say  that  Shakespeare 
lacked  appreciation  of  Bottom  and  Peter  Quince 
and  the  rest  of  that  admirable  dramatic  troupe? 

But  leaving  these  particular  tastes  and  opinions, 
let  us  ask  whether  we  can  gain  any  light  from  the 
plays  on  Shakespeare's  personal  character.  How 
may  we  set  about  the  investigation  ?  A  very 
brilliant  attempt  was  made  in  a  series  of  papers 
contributed  a  few  years  ago  by  Mr.  Frank  Harris  to 
the  Saturday  Review^  and  since  collected,  to  deduce 
the  dramatist's  own  disposition  from  a  certain  pre- 
dominant type  alleged  to  be  found  in  the  plays. 
Mr.  Harris  contended  that  if  Shakespeare's  many 
creations  were  placed  side  by  side,  it  would  be 
observed  that  one  special  type  came  over  and  over 
again,  and  this  type,  which  the  poet  found  most 
interesting  and  has  therefore  made  the  most  perfect,  , 


88  SHAKESPEARE 

must,  he  argues,  have  been  drawn  from  himself. 
Just  as  Rembrandt  painted  his  own  portrait  at  all 
the  critical  periods  of  his  life,  so,  it  is  alleged,  did 
Shakespeare.  He  painted  it  first  as  a  youth  given 
over  to  love's  dominion,  in  Romeo  ;  a  little  later,  as 
a  melancholy  onlooker  at  life's  pageant,  in  Jaques  ; 
then  in  middle  age,  as  an  "  cxsthcte-philosopher  "  of 
kindliest  nature  in  Hamlet  and  Macbeth  ;  after  that 
as  the  Duke,  incapable  of  severity,  in  "  Measure  for 
Measure  "  ;  and  finally,  idealised  out  of  all  likeness 
to  humanity,  in  the  master-magician  Duke  Prospero. 
As  a  result  of  an  examination  of  these  several 
portraits  Mr.  Harris  pronounces  Shakespeare  to  have 
been,  in  personal  disposition,  of  a  contemplative, 
philosophical  nature,  of  great  intellectual  fairness  and 
great  kindness  of  heart ;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
incapable  of  severity  and  almost  of  action,  of  a 
feminine,  sensual  temperament,  melancholy,  soft- 
fibred,  neuropathic.  It  is  a  portrait  which  has  been 
much  praised  ;  and  as  a  tour  deforce  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  praise  it  too  highly  ;  but  the  point  of  interest 
to  us  is  not  whether  it  is  a  clever  picture,  but 
whether  it  is  a  true  likeness.  I  do  not  think 
much  subtlety  will  be  required  to  show  that  it 
is  not.  We  must  first  ask  what  it  is,  which  all  these 
characters  have  in  common,  that  makes  our  critic  so 
sure  that  they  are  all  portraits  of  the  same  person. 
The  answer  is  that  they  are  all  persons  given  to 
reflection,  to  self-revelation,  to  pouring  out  their 
dissatisfaction  with  life,  and  unpacking  their  hearts 


SHAKESPEARE  89 

in  words,  and  moreover  all  persons  who  do  so  in 
incomparable  lyric  poetry,  so  that  we  are  sure  the 
voice  must  be  the  authentic  voice  of  Shakespeare. 

It  will  be  worth  while  to  look  for  a  moment  at  one 
or  two  of  these  pictures  which  are  thus  presented  to 
us  as  the  portraits  of  the  artist  himself.  On  Romeo 
we  need  not  stay,  he  is  young  and  a  lover,  and 
Shakespeare  had  undoubtedly  been  both  ;  moreover 
Romeo  has  imagination,  like  Shakespeare  ;  but  when 
we  have  added  that  he  was  brave  and  somewhat  im- 
pulsive, we  have  noted  all  his  salient  characteristics  ; 
for  "  Romeo  and  Juliet"  is  not  in  its  chief  interest  a 
play  of  character  ;  the  tragic  element  does  not  come 
out  of  the  characters  of  either  hero  or  heroine  ;  they 
are  but  the  "  most  precious  among  many  precious 
things  "  which  have  to  be  made  a  sacrifice  of,  in 
order  that  the  bloody  feud  between  the  Montagues 
and  Capulets  may  be  healed.  But  when  from 
Romeo  we  pass  to  "  the  melancholy "  Jaques,  we 
may  fairly  protest  against  the  identification  of 
Shakespeare  with  him  and  his  view  of  life.  Jaques 
is  a  sentimental  egotist,  and  a  rhetorical  rhapsodiser, 
who  enjoys  and  parades  a  philosophic  melancholy. 
We  know  that  Shakespeare  did  not  mean  us  to 
admire  Jaques's  melancholy,  because  he  makes  all 
the  healthy- minded  people  in  the  play,  one  after 
another,  laugh  at  it.  And  what  do  the  philosophical 
reflections  amount  to  ?  There  is  the  satirical  speech 
upon  society  suggested  by  the  wounded  deer,  and 
the    Duke   tells    Jaques    frankly    that   satire   is    an 


90  SHAKESPEARE 

unhealthy  form  of  employment  ;  and  there  is  the 
speech,  which  every  child  learns,  about  the  seven 
ages  of  man,  a  beautifully  written  commonplace,  but 
not  in  Shakespeare's  vein.  Never  does  Shakespeare 
when  he  speaks  in  his  own  person  in  the  Sonnets, 
and  never  does  he  (as  I  believe)  through  the 
lips  of  the  characters  with  whom  he  sympathises, 
pity  or  despise  human  life  as  such  ;  never  does 
he  speak  of  it  as  merely  a  stage  play  ;  there  are 
plenty  of  things  in  life  which  disgust  and  weary 
him  ;  but  he  does  not  say  "  All  the  world's  a 
stage."  Jaques  says  that.  If  Shakespeare,  as 
one  tradition  asserts,  himself  played  the  part  of 
Adam,  he  would  enter  on  Orlando's  shoulders  after 
the  delivery  of  this  speech,  no  doubt  amid  the  roar 
of  the  theatre  which  had  greeted  it,  and  not,  I  think, 
without  a  smile  at  such  uncritical  applause.  The 
next  portrait  is  Hamlet,  and  in  finding  in  Hamlet's 
mouth  hints  of  the  poet's  own  view  of  things,  our 
critic  is  only  following  a  commonly  received  and 
justifiable  opinion.  The  Sonnets  afford  not  a  few 
parallels.  But  the  very  fact  that  Hamlet  is  made 
the  hero  of  a  tragedy  implies  that  the  dramatist  is 
viewing  his  character  with  not  entirely  approving 
eyes.  In  no  tragedy  after  "Romeo  and  Juliet"  is 
the  hero  merely  the  victim  of  circumstances,  there 
is  always  something  in  his  own  character  which 
involves  him  in  catastrophe,  and  without  going  into 
detail  it  is  sufficiently  clear  that  the  root  of  trouble 
in  Hamlet's  case   is  just  this   brooding  melancholy 


SHAKESPEARE  9I 

which  renders  him  incapable  of  action  except  upon 
sudden  impulse.  I  would  urge,  therefore,  that  if  we 
find  Shakespeare  holding  up  one  kind  of  reflective 
melancholy  to  ridicule  in  "  As  You  Like  It,"  and 
showing  the  fatal  consequences  of  another  kind  in 
"  Hamlet,"  the  most  we  could  infer  would  be  that 
he  felt  in  himself  the  temptation  to  that  infirmity. 
But  all  that  we  know  of  his  outward  life  gives  the 
opposite  impression.  At  this  point,  then,  I  shall 
take  leave  to  consider  that  the  method  of  discover- 
ing Shakespeare's  character  by  identifying  him  with 
this  and  that  of  his  dramatis  personcs  has  broken 
down,  without  going  on  to  discuss  his  likeness  to 
Macbeth  or  the  Duke  in  "  Measure  for  Measure," 
about  whom  I  wish  to  say  a  word  presently  in 
another  connection,  or  to  Prospero,  who  has  no 
very  clearly  defined  characteristic  but  that  of 
benignity. 

If  we  are  to  reach  any  results,  we  must  frame 
our  interrogation  in  a  somewhat  different  form,  and 
ask  what  light  we  can  get  from  the  plays  not 
directly  upon  Shakespeare's  character,  but  on  his 
view  of  life,  and  his  opinions  on  men  and  things. 
And  one  answer  at  once  suggests  itself  from  what 
has  been  already  said.  We  can  observe  the  senti- 
ments put  into  the  mouths  of  those  characters  with 
whom  we  are  plainly  meant  to  sympathise,  and 
contrast  them  with  those  that  are  put  into  the 
mouths  of  other  characters  with  whom  we  are 
meant   not  to  sympathise.     This  is  a  consideration 


92  SHAKESPEARE 

sufficiently  obvious,  but  it  is  too  often  neglected, 
although  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  the 
interpretation  of  the  dramas.  There  are  many  little 
books  made  to  sell  for  presents  which  collect  what 
are  called  the  beauties  of  Shakespeare ;  but  very 
rarely  in  such  books  do  we  find  any  discrimination 
as  to  the  character  of  the  person  who  makes  the 
speech  that  is  scheduled  as  a  beauty.  I  have  already 
commented  on  Jaques's  opinion  that  "  all  the  world's 
a  stage,  and  all  the  men  and  women  merely  players." 
Take  for  another  example  the  saying  of  Hamlet 
which  is  sometimes  a  little  thoughtlessly  quoted  : 

"  There's  a  divinity  doth  shape  our  ends, 
Rough-hew  them  how  we  will." 

Could  any  one  quote  this  as  the  opinion  of  Shake- 
speare himself  who  remembered  that  it  is  Hamlet 
who  says  it,  by  way  of  excuse  for  his  own  malady  of 
alternate  laissez-faire  and  sudden  impulse  ?  On  the 
other  hand,  the  sentiments  that  have  passed,  and 
rightly  passed,  into  the  spiritual  currency  of  the 
English  people  will  always  be  found  put  into  the 
mouth  of  characters  with  whom,  in  the  action, 
the  poet  is  in  sympathy  ;  and  if  we  collect  a  few  of 
these,  such  as  the  passage  beginning  "  Sweet  are  the 
uses  of  adversity,"  or 

"  There  is  some  soul  of  goodness  in  things  evil 
Would  men  observingly  distil  it  out," 


or 


"  If  our  virtues 
Did  not  go  forth  of  us,  'twere  all  alike 
As  if  we  had  them  not," 


SHAKESPEARE  93 

they  suggest  to  us  an  outlook  upon  the  world  bright, 
hopeful,  and  stirring  ;  not  that  of  a  dreamy,  melan- 
choly, sentimental  neuropath  ;  they  present  a  view 
which  is  consistent  with  the  picture  we  obtain  from 
the  story  of  Shakespeare's  life,  of  a  man  who  worked 
hard  in  his  calling,  and  of  whom  his  professional 
comrades  could  speak  with  respect  and  affection  :  "  I 
loved  the  man,  and  do  honour  his  memory,  on  this 
side  idolatry,  as  much  as  any.  He  was  indeed  honest, 
and  of  an  open  and  free  nature." 

But  we  can  get  back  to  something  in  the  dramas 
more  fundamental  and  more  self- revealing  than  any 
isolated  sentiments.  We  can  observe  the  way  in 
which  Shakespeare  viewed  his  world  of  men  as  a 
whole ;  what  interested  him  in  it  ;  the  general  idea 
he  had  formed  of  human  nature  and  its  possibilities  ; 
his  opinion  of  where  human  success  lay  and  what 
constituted  failure.  We  can  put  the  question,  what 
sort  of  place  did  the  world  seem  to  Shakespeare  to 
be  ?  It  is  quite  clear  that  there  was  a  great  deal  in 
the  world  that  filled  him  with  disgust  ;  the  Sonnets 
tell  us  that  :  — "  Tired  of  all  these,  from  these  would 
I  be  gone  "  ;  but  they  tell  us  also  how  much  there  was 
in  the  world  that  he  admired  and  loved  ;  and  the 
more  serious  plays  show  us  unmistakably  that  Shake- 
speare held  it  to  be  man's  business  not  to  yield  to 
the  evil,  but  to  fight  it  with  wisdom  and  endurance. 
One  point  that  most  strikes  us  is  that  Shakespeare 
looked  upon  the  world  as  a  moral  order.  Men  and 
women,   as    Shakespeare    saw    and  drew    them,    are 


94  SHAKESPEARE 

always  creatures  exercising  freedom  of  will.  In  the 
writings  of  some  other  dramatists,  the  persons  of  their 
dramas  are  sometimes  represented  as  the  sport  of  the 
higher  powers  ;  but  in  the  world  that  Shakespeare's 
art  mirrors  for  us,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  man 
driven  upon  evil  courses  by  fate ;  the  spring  of 
each  man's  action  is  seen  to  lie  in  his  own  desires  ; 
he  may  do  or  leave  undone.  He  may  apparently 
be  helped  or  hindered  by  principalities  and  powers 
of  worlds  invisible  ;  but  he  cannot  be  moved  by 
them  to  action  against  his  will.  The  "  weird  sisters  " 
who  appear  to  Macbeth  cannot  bear  the  blame  of  his 
crime,  or  share  it,  because  they  appeared  also  to  his 
fellow-captain  Banquo,  who  shook  off  their  sugges- 
tion ;  and  Hamlet's  ghost,  who  visits  his  son,  is 
powerless  to  touch  the  springs  of  his  will.  And 
Shakespeare's  world  is  a  moral  world  in  the  further 
sense  that  its  men  and  women  are  people  with 
consciences  ;  who  recognise  the  Tightness  or  wrong- 
ness  of  actions,  and  the  law  of  duty.  The  only  one 
of  Shakespeare's  writings  which  takes  a  merely 
sensual  view  of  human  nature  is  the  poem  of  "  Venus 
and  Adonis  "  ;  which  is  extraordinarily  interesting, 
from  our  present  point  of  view,  as  the  first  visible 
effect  upon  Shakespeare's  mind  of  the  Renaissance 
culture  with  which  he  came  in  contact  in  London, 
a  culture  partly  euphuistic,  partly  classical,  and 
wholly  unmoral.  The  effect  unmistakably,  for 
the  time,  was  a  complete  surrender  to  the  doctrine 
of  what  a  later  age  has  known  as  that  of "  art  for 


SHAKESPEARE  95 

art's  sake  "  ;  which  means  that  any  passion  of 
which  human  nature  is  capable  is  suitable  for 
representation,  if  only  it  is  "  as  lively  painted 
as  the  deed  was  done "  ;  with  a  preference  in 
practice  for  the  lower  nature  over  the  higher. 
Happily  Shakespeare  found  a  valuable  corrective 
to  this  view  of  art  in  his  work  as  a  dramatist ;  and 
the  second  poem  he  produced,  a  year  after  the 
first,  though  equally  upon  a  classical  theme,  was 
on  a  less  animal  plane  of  interest,  and  admitted 
such  human  conceptions  as  honour  and  virtue. 
And  ever  after  it  was  this  higher  nature  of  men 
that  remained  to  Shakespeare  the  point  of  chief 
interest.  We  see  this  most  plainly  in  the  tragedies. 
The  purpose  and  meaning  of  Shakespeare's  tragic 
art  has  been  much  discussed  of  late,  and  it  is  not 
a  question  on  which  I  wish  to  dogmatise ;  but  at 
least  this  seems  true  to  say,  that  while  it  magnifies 
the  dignity  and  interest  of  human  action  by  giving 
it  the  most  painstaking  study,  it  yet  aims  at  show- 
ing how  the  greatest  among  men  might  be  brought 
to  ruin,  if  only  the  circumstances  of  life  were  so 
contrived  as  to  give  opportunity  and  scope  to 
their  errors  and  defects.  In  his  tragedies  Shake- 
speare contrives  for  his  heroes  just  the  circum- 
stances which  shall  press  upon  their  weak  places, 
and  test  them  to  the  uttermost.  The  tragedy  of 
Hamlet,  or  Brutus,  or  Macbeth,  or  Othello,  or 
Antony,  if  it  is  not  the  tragedy  of  a  noble  and  a 
spiritual  nature,  is  nothing  at  all.     There  is  no  reason 


96  SHAKESPEARE 

why  the  play  should  have  been  written.  And  if  wc 
are  justified  in  drawing  conclusions  as  to  the  char- 
acter of  a  man  from  a  survey  of  his  interests,  the 
light  that  the  Shakespearian  tragedies  throw  back 
upon  the  character  of  their  writer  is  singularly  bright 
and  clear.  Take,  for  example,  the  tragedy  of  Ham- 
let. A  philosophical  young  prince,  of  a  melancholy 
habit,  finds  an  obligation  laid  upon  him  to  avenge 
his  father's  murder.  In  any  world,  except  the  par- 
ticular world  that  the  poet  has  contrived  for  him,  he 
might  have  lived  a  quiet  life  among  his  books;  doing 
little  active  good  perhaps,  cither  speculatively  or 
practically  ;  but  certainly  doing  no  harm.  But  he 
has  a  task  set  him  by  an  authority  to  which  he 
cannot  but  own  allegiance,  that  of  purging  the  realm 
of  a  monster  ;  and  the  dramatist  has  shown  us  in  a 
crucial  instance  the  tragedy  of  a  brooding  intellect 
divorced  from  will,  of  the  habit  of  thinking  about 
duties  until  we  think  them  away.  Or  take  Brutus 
in  "Julius  Caesar."  Here  again  there  is  question  of 
a  student  called  to  action.  But  the  defect  of  Brutus 
is  not  in  will,  but  in  practical  judgment.  In  the 
sacred  name  of  liberty  Brutus  assassinates  the  real 
saviour  of  society,  and  lets  loose  upon  his  country  the 
horrors  of  civil  war.  In  moral  purpose  his  stature  is 
heroic  ;  he  means  the  best  ;  and  yet  so  far  is  this 
from  atoning  for  his  want  ot  msight  mto  men  s  real 
dispositions  and  the  needs  of  the  time,  that  at  point 
after  point  his  moral  prestige  but  renders  his  want  of 
wisdom  the  more  fatal.     Here  then  are  two  pictures  of 


SHAKESPEARE  97 

great  and  lovable  men,  with  weaknesses  of  character 
such  as  in  everyday  life  we  are  perfectly  familiar  with, 
and  readily  excuse ;  and  Shakespeare  teaches  us  that 
these  defects  need  only  their  fit  occasion  and  full 
development,  to  overwhelm  in  ruin  the  nature  that 
owns  them  and  all  who  are  drawn  within  the  circle  of 
their  influence.  I  venture  to  think,  then,  that  we  are 
justified  in  drawing  a  very  definite  conclusion  as  to 
the  disposition  of  the  man  who  penned  these  two 
plays.  They  show  us  his  high  esteem  for  nobility  of 
character — Hamlet  and  Brutus  are  men  of  a  high 
nobility  whom  we  are  taught  to  love — and  they  show 
us  also  his  strong  sense  of  the  claim  the  world  has 
upon  the  highest  powers  of  the  men  who  are  born 
into  it. 

But  from  our  present  point  of  view,  the  tragedy 
of  "  Macbeth  "  is  an  even  better  example  of  Shake- 
speare's tragic  stage,  because  it  directly  repudiates 
an  accusation  that  might  perhaps  be  made  against 
the  dramatist,  of  taking  a  merely  aesthetic  view 
of  human  life ;  contemplating  it  from  some  lofty 
tower  of  his  palace  of  art.  .For  in  Macbeth  we 
have  a  man  in  whom  this  aesthetic  appreciation  of 
human  life  is  developed  to  an  extraordinary  degree. 
Macbeth  is  a  poet.  He  has  a  fine  and  keen  and 
true  appreciation  of  all  the  situations  in  which  he 
finds  himself,  except  from  the  one  point  of  view 
which  under  his  temptations  would  have  been  worth 
all  the  rest  to  him,  and  which  his  unimaginative 
fellow  Banquo  has  :    the  point  of  view  from  which 

H 


98  SHAKESPEARE 

actions  are  judged  as  simply  right  or  wrong.     As  we 

read  the  soHloquy  in  which  he  debates  the  suggested 

murder  of  Duncan,  we  notice  that  the  considerations 

which  make  him  hesitate  are,  in  the  main,  aesthetic 

considerations  ;  that   it   is  unbecoming    in   a    man's 

kinsman,  or  host    or  subject,  to    kill    him ;  there   is 

no  question  of  any  sin    in  murder.     And    of  every 

succeeding  event  in  his  life  he  is,  from  the  aesthetic 

point  of  view,  equally  appreciative  ;  just  as  he  enjoys 

popularity  and  on  that   score   is  almost    willing   to 

refrain  from  murder,  so  he  understands  that  the  old 

age  to  which  a  usurper  can  look  forward  cannot  be 

surrounded  "  with  honour,  love,  obedience,  troops  of 

friends  "  ;  and  when,  just  before  the  last,  he  learns 

his    wife's    death,    he    speaks    with   the    same    just 

appraisement    the    epitaph    of    the    life   they    have 

lived  together  since  their  great  sin,  the  epitaph  of 

the  non-moral  life,  seeing  in  it  a  mere  succession  of 

days  with  no  goal  but  death,  and  therefore  no  real 

meaning. 

"  To-morrow,  and  to-morrow,  and  to-morrow 
Creeps  in  this  petty  pace  from  day  to  day 
To  the  last  syllable  of  recorded  time  ; 
And  all  our  yesterdays  have  lighted  fools 
The  way  to  dusty  death.     Out,  out,  brief  candle. 
Life's  but  a  walking  shadow  ;  a  poor  player 
That  struts  and  frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage. 
And  then  is  heard  no  more  ;  it  is  a  tale 
Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury. 
Signifying  nothing." 

Could    there    be     a     better    commentary    on     the 
dramatist's  own    view  of  life,   than    this    passionate 


SHAKESPEARE  99 

judgment  of  the  futility  of  the   life    Macbeth   had 
elected  to  live  ? 

Let  us  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  comedies,  and 
see  if  we  can  glean  any  light  from  them  upon  what 
Shakespeare  liked  or  disliked  in  men  and  women. 
It  seems  to  me  not  a  little  significant  that  two  at 
least  of  the  defective  types  of  character  which  he 
handles  in  the  tragedies,  he  handles  over  again  in 
the  comedies,  only  in  the  comedy  he  treats  them  as 
they  are  found  not  in  heroic  natures,  but  in  ordinary 
specimens  of  humanity,  and  in  circumstances  that 
lead  to  a  much  milder  form  of  catastrophe.  I  have 
already  suggested  a  comparison  between  Jaques  and 
Hamlet,  each  of  whom  makes  the  unwarrantable 
claim  to  moralise  upon  life  from  the  outside  with- 
out taking  part  in  it.  In  the  nobler  nature  the 
claim  is  handled  tragically,  in  the  shallower  it  is 
rebuked  by  Rosalind's  fine  wit.  But  there  is  also 
some  sort  of  a  parallel  with  Marcus  Brutus.  The 
self-satisfaction  of  Malvolio  in  "  Twelfth  Night," 
looked  at  by  itself,  is  very  much  the  same  quality  as 
the  self-satisfaction  of  Brutus  :  the  lives  of  both  pass 
in  a  dream,  neither  is  in  touch  with  the  real  world  ; 
and — it  is  a  curious  point  —both  are  snared  to  their 
ruin  by  the  same  trick  of  a  forged  letter  so  contrived 
as  to  fall  in  with  their  dreams.  But  the  interest  of 
the  comedies,  for  our  present  investigation,  lies  in 
this,  that  they  present  us  not  only  with  criticism,  but 
with  a  positive  ideal ;  and  this  Shakespeare  gives  us 
in  his  women.     The  creator  of  Portia,  and  Rosalind, 


100  SHAKESrEARE 

and  Beatrice,  had,  we  are  convinced,  a  very  clear 
ideal  in  his  own  mind  of  the  sort  of  life  that  men 
and  women  should  pursue,  a  life  of  sound  sense  as 
opposed  to  folly,  and  goodness  as  opposed  to  vice. 
There  is  one  other  point  I  should  like  to  draw 
attention  to  in  Shakespeare's  comedies  because  I 
think  it  is  characteristic  of  the  man  ;  of  his  justice 
and  tolerance.  While  he  keeps  his  ideal  perfectly 
clear,  and  we  are  never,  I  believe,  for  a  moment 
in  doubt  as  to  his  own  judgment  upon  his  characters, 
he  is  not  afraid  of  allowing  traits  of  real  goodness  to 
persons  who  on  other  accounts  are  exposed  to  our 
censure.  Take  Sir  Toby  for  example.  There  is  no 
denying  that  he  is  a  terrible  toper,  and  Shakespeare 
does  not  make  us  in  love  with  his  drunkenness  ;  but 
Shakespeare  does  let  us  see  that  in  the  drunkard  the 
gentleman  is  not  quite  extinct.  It  will  be  remem- 
bered that  the  disguised  Viola,  being  mistaken  for 
her  brother  Sebastian,  is  charged  by  Antonio  with 
denying  her  benefactor  his  own  purse.  This  so 
horrifies  Sir  Toby  that  he  draws  his  friends  aside, 
and  will  have  nothing  more  to  do  with  the  youth, 
"A  very  dishonest,  paltry  boy,"  he  calls  him.  It  is 
this  perfectly  firm  but  perfectly  equitable  and  all- 
round  judgment  on  points  of  character  that  is  so 
wonderful  in  the  plays,  and  it  is  a  mere  caricature  to 
assert,  as  some  critics  have  asserted,  that  Shake- 
speare was  merely  easy-going  on  points  of  morals. 

Indeed,  in   one  famous  case,   it    might    be  better 
pleaded    that   he   was   too   severe     a    moralist.       I 


SHAKESPEARE  101' 

imagine  everyone  feels  a  shock  when'at'-tHe  end -cJf' 
"  Henry  IV."  he  comes  upon  the  new  king's  sermon 
to  his  old  boon-companion  Falstaff.  "  I  know  thee 
not,  old  man  ;  fall  to  thy  prayers."  It  may  have 
been,  as  has  been  eloquently  maintained,'  that  Shake- 
speare had  made  Prince  Hal,  from  the  first,  a  bit  of 
a  prig,  and  knew  he  would  preach  when  the  chance 
came.  Nevertheless  Falstaff's  misfortune  may  also 
be  due  to  the  fact  that  he  comes  into  a  historical 
play  instead  of  a  pure  comedy.  In  "  The  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor,"  Falstaff,  notwithstanding  his 
enormities — and  Shakespeare  needs  all  the  excuse 
of  a  Royal  Command  for  the  way  he  has  degraded 
him— meets  no  further  punishment  than  the  jeers  of 
his  would-be  victims  ;  it  is  sufficient  in  comedy  that 
faults  should  be  judged  by  laughter.  Nobody  wants 
Sir  Toby  put  on  the  black  list  as  a  tippler,  or 
Autolycus  sent  to  gaol  for  filching  linen  from  the 
hedges.  But  when  the  world  of  comedy  touches 
the  real  world,  as  in  "  Henry  IV."  and  "  Henry  V.," 
social  offences  have  to  meet  social  punishment,  and 
so  we  have  not  only  Falstaff  exiled  from  court 
and  dying  of  a  broken  heart,  but  poor  Nym  and 
Bardolph  hanged  for  stealing  in  the  wars. 

The  question  of  Shakespeare's  religion  is  too  large 
and  difficult  to  be  discussed  at  the  end  of  an  essay,^ 

'  By  Mr.  A.  C.  Bradley,  author  of  "  Shakespearean  Tragedy," 
my  tutor  at  college,  qiiein  honoris  causa  noinino. 

-'  I  have  done  my  best  to  settle  the  question  as  between  Papist  and 
Protestant  in  the  Stratford  Head  Shakespea/'e,  vol.  x. 


>  >     > 


102  SHAKESPEARE 

hu'>:  I  sKoald  like  lo  say  a  word  about  his  supposed 
hatred  and  abuse  of  Puritans.  This  is  one  of  the 
fixed  ideas  of  the  very  meritorious  Hfe  of  Shake- 
speare by  Dr.  Brandes.  "From  'Twelfth  Night' 
onwards,"  he  says,  "an  unremitting  war  against 
Puritanism,  conceived  as  hypocrisy,  is  carried  on 
through  '  Hamlet,'  through  the  revised  version  ol 
'  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,'  and  through  '  Measure 
for  Measure,'  in  which  his  wrath  rises  to  a  tem- 
pestuous pitch "  (p.  240).  We  turn  to  "  Twelfth 
Night "  and  find  this :  Maria  says  of  Malvolio— 
"  Marry,  sir,  sometimes  he  is  a  kind  of  Puritan  "  ; 
to  which  Sir  Andrew  replies,  "  O,  if  I  thought  that, 
I'd  beat  him  like  a  dog." 

"  Sir  Joby.  What,  for  being  a  Puritan  !  thy  exquisite 
reason,  good  knighl  ? 

"5/>  Andrew.  I  have  no  exquisite  reason  for't,  but  I 
have  reason  good  enough. 

"  Maria.  The  devil  a  Puritan  that  he  is,  or  anything 
constantly  but  a  timc-pleaser." 

Now,  surely,  that  passage  might  have  been  intro- 
duced in  defence  of  Puritans  rather  than  in  scorn  of 
them.  Sir  Andrew  takes  the  tone  of  courtier-like 
contempt,  and  Sir  Toby  asks  him  to  explain  ;  and 
he  cannot.  Then  Maria  retracts  the  name,  and  says 
Malvolio  can't  be  a  Puritan  because  he  isn't  con- 
scientious. The  reference  in  "  Hamlet "  turns  out  to 
be  Hamlet's  saying  "  A  great  man's  memory  may 
outlive  half  his    life,  but    by'r    lady  he  must    build 


SHAKESPEARE  IO3 

churches  then,"  but  the  oath  hy'r  lady  is  proof  enough 
that  no  one  in  the  audience  would  take  a  reference 
to  the  Puritans.  In  "  All's  Well,"  that  most  dis- 
agreeable of  all  Shakespeare's  plays,  I  believe  one  of 
the  earliest  he  wrote,  which  even  his  revision  in  the 
Hamlet  period  could  not  cure,  the  Clown  indeed 
makes  some  unsavoury  jests,  but  he  blunts  their  edge 
by  dividing  them  equally  between  Papist  and 
Puritan  ;  and  I  should  say  that  to  find  in  "  Measure 
for  Measure  "  an  attack  on  Puritanism  is  entirely  to 
misconceive  that  play.  The  heroine  of  the  play 
is  Isabella,  and  if  Isabella  is  not  a  Puritan  after 
Milton's  strong  type,  what  is  she  ?  Dr.  Brandes 
does  not  indeed  assert  that  Shakespeare  wrote  the 
play  in  the  interest  of  Pompey  and  Mistress  Over- 
done ;  but  that  he  wrote  it  in  the  interest  of  King 
James,  who  was  already  coming  to  blows  with 
Puritanism,  wishing  to  defend  his  indifference  to 
immorality.  When  questions  are  raised  as  to  the 
general  ideas  underlying  a  play,  the  appeal  must  be 
to  the  general  impression  it  makes  on  the  indifferent 
spectator  ;  but  apart  from  that,  as  conclusive  against 
Dr.  Brandes'  view,  it  seems  sufficient  to  point  to  the 
scene  in  the  first  act  where  the  Duke  confesses  to 
Friar  Thomas  that  he  had  been  too  remiss,  and 
again  to  such  a  speech   as   this   at  the  end  of  the 

play : 

"  My  business  in  this  state 
Made  me  a  looker-on  here  in  Vienna, 
Where  I  have  seen  corruption  boil  and  bubble 
Till  it  o'errun  the  stew." 


I04  SHAKESPEARE 

If  Shakespeare  had  strong  opinions  about  the 
Hamlets  of  the  world  not  bestirring  themselves 
to  do  their  duty  in  it,  \vc  may  e^uess  that  his 
view  extended  to  reigning  princes,  though  as  to 
them  he  had  to  express  himself  with  some  re- 
serve. 

In  one  word  then,  if  I  am  asked  how  we  can 
get  behind  Shakespeare's  writing  to  the  man  him- 
self, I  should  sa)',  we  must  ask  ourselves  what 
is  the  impression  left  on  our  mind  after  a  care- 
ful reading  of  any  play ;  because  that  will  be 
Shakespeare's  mind  speaking  to  ours.  And  I  can- 
not think  the  general  impression  we  thus  gather 
from  the  great  volume  of  the  poet's  work  is  at 
all  a  vague  one. 

He  could  paint  passion,  whether  in  a  Cleopatra  or 
a  Lear,  as  no  other  dramatist  has  painted  it,  but  he 
does  not  impress  us  as  himself  passionate  by  nature. 
Rather,  we  are  conscious  all  through  the  plays  of 
the  allied  graces  of  gentleness  and  manliness.  There 
is  in  them  a  clear  outlook  upon  life,  both  on  its 
good  and  its  evil  ;  a  strong  sense  that,  however 
the  evil  came  about  (and  there  were  times  when 
it  seemed  overwhelming),  yet  that  the  good  must 
fight  it  ;  and  at  the  same  time  there  is  a  gentleness 
that  is  prepared  to  acknowledge  good  in  unexpected 
places,  and  is  read)'  to  forgive. 


Ur\lVhKSllY    Ut    CALlfUKINlA    LlbKAKY 
Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


t^UN     5  1953 


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